


First Contact

by draculard



Category: Star Wars: Thrawn Series - Timothy Zahn (2017)
Genre: Alcohol, Alien Cultural Differences, Alien Landing, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bathing/Washing, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, Drunken sex, First Contact, Fluff, Hair Washing, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, Language Barrier, M/M, Mesh Shirts, Nudity, Spaceship Crash, Storms, Trauma, UFOs, fear of thunder, scalp massage, showering together
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26152657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Eli's pretty confident that aliens don't exist — until he finds an Unidentified Flying Object crashed in the woods just a mile from his house, with a strange blue-skinned humanoid lying unconscious on the ground nearby.
Relationships: Thrawn | Mitth'raw'nuruodo/Eli Vanto
Comments: 108
Kudos: 114





	1. Chapter 1

It wasn’t every day that you stumbled across a blue spaceman in the woods. And Eli was kind of an expert here; he’d gone on a walk in these particular woods just about every day since he was a little kid, so he knew for a fact that they didn’t _typically_ contain blue spacemen or crashed UFOs.

When he first spotted the twisted mess of metal through the trees, he thought what anyone else would think: that he’d fumbled his way into the middle of a car crash. His immediate thought was, _How the hell did anyone drive this far in the first place?_ The woods were too dense for even an ATV to get through, and there were no fallen trees leading up to the crash to indicate a careening, high-speed wreck, especially not one that started at the road a mile back.

But there were plenty of crushed trees directly _beneath_ the car crash. Splintered trunks and severed branches littered the ground nearby, and as Eli picked his way through the foliage — he could see black spots where the grass had burnt away — he realized that what he was looking at very much _wasn’t_ a car. 

And then he saw a man lying with his back against a fallen tree, and his first thought was, once again, wrong:

_What is that, a mannequin?_

The deep blue skin convinced him immediately that the man lying there couldn’t be real, so it _had_ to be a mannequin, though he couldn’t imagine why anyone would paint a mannequin such a garish color. Still, half of his brain was conjuring up excuses (a crash dummy? An art piece? A statue?) and the other half was ripping itself apart, acknowledging what Eli couldn’t bring himself to face quite yet, screaming, _That isn’t a car, you idiot._

_And that’s not a human._

It was only when he got close enough to see the blue-skinned man’s chest rising and falling in a quick, staccato rhythm that Eli accepted it. Yes, this was real. Yes, this person was — for whatever silly reason — completely blue. 

And yeah, that was some sort of UFO behind him. Once he’d accepted _that_ , it became a little easier to accept the blue-skinned humanoid lying on the ground. Eli looked over his shoulder and eyed the UFO for a moment; it was hard to make out the exact original shape of it now, but he could clearly tell that it never had wheels, nor did it ever have wings. Other than that, it looked almost like the body of a plane — long and sleek and elegant. 

He looked back at the man ( _the alien,_ one part of his brain insisted) and for just a second, he couldn’t breathe. As it turned out, his first impression was wrong. The alien wasn’t unconscious, and it certainly wasn’t dead. 

The alien was awake.

And its eyes were _glowing_ _red_.

“Aw, Jesus,” Eli said, tumbling backward onto his ass. He scooted away from the alien, scrabbling for purchase in the bed of fallen leaves and broken twigs beneath him. The alien didn’t move a muscle; he stayed utterly still against the trunk of the tree, his eyes unblinking, one hand pressed firmly against his side. Eli recovered himself quickly; he shifted back onto his knees and approached the alien again, a bit slower this time, his hands raised before him in the universal gesture for peace.

Well, he _hoped_ it was universal, anyway. 

“Uh, do you speak English?” Eli asked. The alien only stared at him, eyes flickering curiously. “Or Chinese, maybe?” Eli tried. “I know some Mandarin from work. _Shuō pǔtōng huà ma_?”

This time, he was certain the alien’s eyebrows twitched, but there was no other sign of recognition. And it was entirely possible that even if he somehow _did_ speak Mandarin, Eli’s country accent had mangled the words beyond all semblance of language. Sighing, Eli settled back on his haunches and pointed at himself very clearly, trying a different method.

“Eli,” he said, over-pronouncing the word. The alien watched him closely, eyes roving from Eli’s hand to his mouth. Slowly, he raised his free hand — not the one pressed against his side — and pointed to himself.

“Chiss,” he said.

 _Me Tarzan, you Jane,_ Eli thought. He resisted the urge to say “very good” — it would probably just muddy the waters — and instead shuffled just a tiny bit closer, his boots dragging through the duff on the forest floor. The alien’s eyes tracked his every movement, but there was no sign of tension or wariness in his face.

Encouraged by the alien’s quick understanding, Eli tried something more complex.

“May I,” said Eli slowly, pointing to himself with both hands, “see—” He pointed to his eyes. “—your—” He pointed to the alien, who watched Eli’s roving hand carefully, as if preparing for a strike. “—injury?” 

Eli’s hand came to a halt a few inches from the alien’s blood-soaked chest. The blue hand covering the wound twitched and moved slightly, revealing torn skin and white glimmers of bone, all of it tangled with fibers from the alien’s clothes.

“May I see your injury,” the alien repeated, his pronunciation a little marble-mouthed but otherwise accurate. Eli said nothing, too busy examining the wound now that it had been uncovered. It was deeper than he’d hoped it would be. He didn’t like that he could see the bone at _all_ , and he liked even less that he couldn’t tell whether the bone was broken or whole.

“ _I_ ,” the alien continued, pointing to himself and sounding almost absent-minded. Then, touching Eli’s shoulder so gently Eli almost didn’t feel it, he said, “ _Your_. Eli.”

Despite the seriousness of the injury, a brief, distracted smile flitted across Eli’s face. The alien’s hand on his shoulder was cold. A side effect of blood loss, or his natural body temperature? “That’s right,” Eli said.

“ _See_ ,” said the alien, pointing to his own peculiar eyes. “ _Injury_.” His hand moved down to cover the wound again. “I injury?”

The crisp tone of his voice made it clear this was a question; the alien had a massive cut on his chest, and he wanted to make sure his grammar was correct? Eli glanced up, biting his lip, and set the issue of the wound aside for now. He put a hand on the alien’s shoulder, just like the alien did for him, and said, “You,” very clearly. After a pause, he added, “You are Chiss.” Moving his hand down to the wound, he continued, “ _Your_ injury.”

The alien tracked every movement, his lips compressed, his eyes thoughtful as he absorbed the correction. 

“I am Eli,” Eli continued, laying a hand on his own chest. He raised his left hand a moment later and held it close to the alien’s face, so the small, red scratch on his thumb was visible. “ _My_ injury,” he said. 

The alien inclined his head once, a nod of understanding. At least, Eli reflected, they had _nodding_ in common. That simplified the language barrier a little bit. He gestured to the wound again and mimed stitching it back together; the spark of understanding in the alien’s eyes appeared impressively fast and he nodded again, this time with a mix of eagerness and relief. He held his hands out, palm down, reaching for Eli’s arms.

When Eli moved forward to help him to his feet, the alien didn’t resist.

* * *

How exactly did one teach an alien English?

Hell, how did one teach a _human_ English? Kids just picked it up naturally, right? And adults who wanted to learn it could at least access an English-Russian or English-Japanese or English-whatever dictionary, plus bilingual teachers to help them along. None of that was really feasible here; there weren’t, to Eli’s knowledge, any human-alien dictionaries, unless this guy happened to speak Klingon. 

Sighing, Eli did the only thing he could think of.

He turned on the TV and flipped the channel to _Sesame Street._

“Watch this,” he said to the alien, pointing emphatically at the TV screen. “This will help you understand me.”

The alien’s eyes were already studiously fixed on Bert and Ernie, his eyebrows furrowed. He sat on Eli’s couch with a towel beneath him to prevent bloodstains, but the wound in his chest had almost entirely clotted. Eli placed a bowl of warm water on a coffee table nearby and hurried to fetch the first-aid kit.

When he came back, the alien looked at him and very meticulously formed the words, “What is your name, little girl?”

Eli fumbled, nearly dropping the kit. “Not little girl,” he said quickly — he glanced at the television screen where, to his dismay, Grover was interviewing a small child. He pointed to the girl on-screen and said, “That is a little girl. I am _not_ a little girl. I am a _big_ — well, nevermind what I am.”

He suspected this line of reasoning might be hopeless. But to his surprise, the alien just pursed his lips and nodded. After a moment, he tried again. “What is your name?” he asked, dropping the ‘little girl’ portion entirely.

“Eli,” Eli said patiently. “Remember? I told you that already.”

He knelt next to the coffee table and dipped a clean rag in the water. He almost missed the look of dawning understanding as it passed over the alien’s face.

“My name is not Chiss,” the alien said, with peculiar emphasis on _name_. “My name is Thrawn.”

Eli hesitated, processing the information as he wrung out the rag. When he glanced up, the alien — Thrawn — was staring down at him expectantly.

“Oh,” said Eli. “Well — that’s good to know. Er, you mind taking off your…?” He gestured futilely at the ripped … what was it, a tunic? It looked like something out of Star Trek. Whatever it was called, Thrawn shucked it off quickly; there was a slow, agonizing tearing noise as the bloodstained cloth ripped away from his skin, but aside from a brief wince, Thrawn gave no sign of pain.

Eli cleaned the wound methodically, the rag in one hand and a pair of tweezers in the other to remove fibers from Thrawn’s skin. Behind him, Grover’s voice faded out and Elmo started singing instead. He ignored it all, pressing the wet rag gently against Thrawn’s cold skin and wiping the clotted blood away one bit at a time. He couldn’t help but notice one or two things about the naked, blue torso presented to him now.

The first was that Thrawn was lean and muscular like a sci-fi-themed underwear model for Calvin Klein.

The second was that he was absolutely fucking _covered_ in scars. There were strange burn scars dotting his abdomen, his chest, his arms — far too large to come from cigarette butts, but definitely in a vague, circular shape, like somebody took a heated cooking pot and held it against Thrawn’s skin just long enough to leave a lasting mark. There were thick, healed gashes that looked _sort of_ like they came from knives — or, Eli thought as he noted a particularly long one, from swords. The fresh wound over Thrawn’s ribs certainly wouldn’t look out of place once Eli was done with it. 

He glanced up, examining Thrawn’s face more carefully while the alien studied _Sesame Street_ with a seriousness that seems almost ludicrous, given the material. Now that he was really looking, Eli could see little scars dotting Thrawn’s left cheekbone, the right side of his jaw, his upper lip, his temple.

Christ. He’d adopted some sort of alien Rambo.

Eli was still staring at the tiny scar bisecting Thrawn’s upper lip when those red eyes flickered down and met his own. Blushing furiously, Eli turned his attention back to the open wound. He cleaned a bit of dried blood away from the ragged edges of Thrawn’s skin and reached behind him for the butterfly bandages. 

When all was said and done, the wound looked a whole hell of a lot like Eli’s first car, an old jalopy held together with duct tape and spit. Thrawn glanced down at it, raised an eyebrow, and gave Eli an eloquent facial shrug, as if to say, _Good enough._

“I’ll, er, try to find you something to wear,” said Eli, eyeing Thrawn’s bare torso. “I don’t suppose you’d fit into a medium, would you?”

Thrawn, following Eli’s gaze, looked back down at his chest and touched the thoroughly-bandaged wound. He glanced up at Eli questioningly. “Find something to wear? Suppose fit? Medium?” he said, shooting off the unfamiliar words in rapid fire.

“Don’t worry about it,” Eli said, knowing even as he said it that there was no point. “I’ve probably got some of my dad’s old clothes hanging around that’ll fit you. Just wait here.”

He hurried down the hall to the spare room which was now mostly used for storage. There were clothes hanging in the closet and folded in the drawers from his parents’ last visit; sorting through them quickly, Eli produced a more-or-less respectable button-up, size XL, and brought it back out to Thrawn.

Who stared at it in complete bewilderment and subtle distaste, as if he’d never seen a shirt before and didn’t like what he saw.

“Oh, come on,” said Eli beseechingly, holding the shirt up against his own chest to model it. “Surely this is better than a Black Sabbath hoodie.”

Unconvinced, Thrawn turned back to _Sesame Street_. Eli tossed the shirt to him and Thrawn allowed it to land on his lap but made no effort to put it on. 

Fantastic. 

“You do it up like this,” said Eli. He took the shirt back and pulled it on over his t-shirt, hyper-aware of how ludicrous it looked draped over his much smaller frame. He did the buttons up while Thrawn watched him like a hawk; then he slipped it off again and put the shirt in Thrawn’s open hand.

Thrawn stared at it, his face blank, and set it aside. He turned his eyes back to _Sesame Street,_ studying Oscar the Grouch’s every move with an intensity that would have been impressive, if he were doing anything other than watching _Sesame Street._

Sighing, Eli went back to his spare room and fetched the Black Sabbath hoodie. 

“No,” said Thrawn, pronouncing the word very carefully when Eli came back into the living room. He pointed to his bare chest, made aggressive eye contact with Eli and said, “Like this.”

“You want to stay shirtless?” Eli asked.

“Shirtless?” Thrawn replied. With a sigh, Eli grabbed the button-up from where Thrawn had draped it over the couch. He held it in front of Thrawn’s face, shaking it slightly for emphasis.

“Shirt,” he said. Then, lowering it, he pointed at Thrawn’s chest and said, “Shirtless.” Pointing down at his feet, he said, “Shoes,” and then toed them off, pointed again (and grimaced when he saw the hole in his left sock), and said, “Shoeless.”

Thrawn inclined his head, but his attention was elsewhere. He craned his neck, looking past Eli at the TV, and watched the exchange there very closely. Turning back to Eli, he touched the edge of his wound and said, “I will stay shirtless. With shirt, ungood.”

Ah. Well, that was actually a pretty simple explanation, Eli thought, his cheeks burning at how long it had taken him to figure the issue out. He looked down at the shirt and the hoodie awkwardly, weighing them in his hands. Then, following Thrawn’s lead, he draped them over the arm of the couch and smoothed out the wrinkles.

“Well, if you get cold, they’re right here waiting for you,” he said. “‘With shirt, ungood’ — that should be…” He took a moment to arrange the words in his head, trying to keep it simple and use mostly words that Thrawn already knew. “The shirt hurts my injury,” he decided eventually.

“The shirt hurts my injury,” Thrawn recited.

“Yes,” said Eli. “Very good. You can also say it irritates the wound, if you wanna get more complex with it. Uh…”

He glanced over his shoulder at _Sesame Street,_ which had gone to commercial, and then looked back at Thrawn. The alien was watching him, his eyes narrow and unnervingly sharp.

“Are you hungry?” Eli asked. He mimed eating, cupping one hand below his mouth and moving the other to his lips in a spooning gesture. This, he thought, would probably be the easiest conversation they had today — but Thrawn only cocked his head, eyes narrowing even further. 

“Hungry,” he repeated.

“Yeah,” said Eli. He started to mime eating again, then stopped. If it hadn’t worked the first time, it wouldn’t work now. “Do you want to eat?” he asked, framing it differently. Then, taking a wild guess based on the half-hour or so of _Sesame Street_ that Thrawn had seen already, “Cookie? Vegetable? Noodle? Spaghetti?” 

A line appeared between Thrawn’s eyebrows. His lips parted, but then he visibly decided against speaking, perhaps unwilling to attempt pronouncing the word ‘spaghetti’ right away. His eyes tracked over the old, hand-carved bookshelves framing the TV.

“Hello?” said Eli, waving his hand in front of Thrawn’s face. Slowly, Thrawn’s eyes shifted back to him. “I asked you a question,” Eli reminded him — then instantly felt bad about his tone. It wasn’t like he could blame Thrawn for not understanding; Eli would’ve been pretty taken aback, too, if Thrawn started saying random nouns in his native tongue. Thinking deeply, he moved his hand to his stomach, making sure that Thrawn followed the movement. Then, refusing to let his self-consciousness get in the way, Eli curled his tongue and made a low growling noise.

Thrawn’s eyebrows raised, something like delight and realization mingling on his face. He tipped his head back to look Eli in the eyes. When he spoke, his tone was pleasant and lilting, but it was also completely unintelligible; the words came out fast, in a sing-song barrage of words that Eli didn’t recognize.

Christ, he was glad he didn’t have to learn that language. He couldn’t even make out two distinct syllables to string together in imitation. As if he recognized that, Thrawn trailed off, still watching Eli, and said,

“Yes. I’m hungry.”

Oh, and the alien had already learned contractions, Eli noted sourly. He gestured for Thrawn to stay put and went through to the kitchen, looking through his cupboards and fridge. Really, he’d planned on making curry tonight, but with an extraterrestrial digestive system thrown into the mix, curry suddenly seemed dangerous. 

In the background, he heard _Sesame Street_ cut off mid-sentence as Thrawn figured out how to work the remote. There was a quick blip of static as he changed from one channel to the next before settling on the local news; a low murmur of voices filtered through to the kitchen, words like ‘ _economic downturn_ ’ and _‘yet another presidential faux pas_ ’ floating on the air. Eli rifled through the cupboards, searching for the most inoffensive items he could find. 

When he returned to the living room, he had a bowl of plain Cap’n Crunch, a protein bar, and a bottle of water (water was safe, right? Water was good for aliens? Memories of _War of the Worlds_ churned unpleasantly in Eli’s brain) with him. He stopped in the doorway, taking in the change of circumstances in the living room quickly; Thrawn had moved from the couch and now stood before the bookshelves, running one hand over the wood; with his other hand, he leaned heavily against the shelf, using it to support his weight as he scanned the titles there. 

“Don’t tell me you learned to read already,” said Eli, only half-joking. Thrawn glanced over his shoulder and then gingerly moved away from the shelves, as if he thought he might be reprimanded for examining them without Eli’s permission. It was only when he reached Eli and looked down at the bowl of Cap’n Crunch that Eli realized Thrawn hadn’t walked away empty-handed; he clutched a battered old volume of an encyclopedia in his left hand. 

Abruptly, the smile slid off Eli’s face. _Had_ Thrawn learned how to read already? Not possible, Eli decided — but he was certainly smarter than he looked if he’d been able to pick out an encyclopedia from the battered detective novels and used textbooks on Eli’s shelves. Something about that specific book must have stood out to him; maybe he’d had time to flip through a few volumes while Eli was away, and he’d noticed the pictures and unusual format of this one and deduced that it was educational. 

But then why not take one of the textbooks instead? Maybe Eli was thinking about this too hard. Maybe it was just a random choice. He gestured Thrawn toward the sofa with a flap of his hand, juggling the three items in his arms until he had them situated on the coffee table. Eli plopped down heavily on the couch, his thigh bumping Thrawn’s as he tried to regain his balance.

“Okay,” he said, pressing the bowl of Cap’n Crunch into Thrawn’s hands. “Try this first. See if it makes you sick.”

Thrawn studied the brightly-colored shapes in the bowl with a critical eye. Eli couldn’t really blame him; he reached over and grabbed a handful from the bowl, popping them into his mouth.

“Just so you know they don’t poison me,” he said as he chewed. One of Thrawn’s eyebrows moved ever-so-slightly higher. He selected a single multi-colored globe and held up, his nose wrinkling at the smell. Before Eli could try to convince him any further, he shrugged and crunched the piece of cereal between his teeth.

“Ech,” he said. 

“Yeah,” said Eli apologetically. “Sorry. Maybe you’ll like the protein bar better?”

If Thrawn understood this suggestion, he didn’t show it — but he was already attacking the cereal again, this time eating it automatically and in greater quantities, with the grimace of a man resigned to his fate. His jaw worked as he chewed; with his mouth full, he placed the book he’d selected on Eli’s left thigh and tapped the cover questioningly.

“It’s an encyclopedia,” Eli told him. “That means it’s full of information on different historical events, places, people, stuff like that. This is volume nine, so it covers everything starting with ‘Emerald’ and ending with ‘Finlay.’”

Thrawn eyed him speculatively, popping a blue crunchberry into his mouth.

“Here, I’ll show you,” said Eli. He flipped the encyclopedia open to a random page and ran his fingers over the entries, tracing each one as he read it. “ _Faroe Islands. Fagus. Fahrenheit, Gabriel Daniel. Faial. Faience_ —”

He started to flip the page, skipping the sizable portion on faience, but Thrawn’s hand slapped down on the page before he could. Eli stopped, moving his fingers to the very edge of the book. When Thrawn was certain Eli wouldn’t skip this section, he removed his hand and gently tapped a picture on the bottom right.

Eli examined it for a moment, then looked up at Thrawn, his eyebrows furrowed. There was nothing particularly interesting about the photo; he looked at it again, closer this time, and then just shrugged. 

“Dutch faience plate with Japanese decorations, about 1700,” he said, reading the caption aloud. He traced the words as he read them, the same way he would read to a small child, and Thrawn followed along eagerly. Eli watched as those glowing red eyes scanned the words over again, quickly, and then returned to the photo of the plate.

Then, gently, Thrawn’s cold hand wrapped around Eli’s wrist and guided him to the start of the section. Letting Eli go, Thrawn tapped the title and said, “Faience. Give to me this section.”

Eli raised an eyebrow. “You mean, _read_ me this section?”

“Read me,” Thrawn agreed. “Yes.”

“Well, finish your cereal first,” said Eli, settling back into the couch. He propped his feet up on the coffee table, knees bent, and rested the encyclopedia at an angle against his thighs. Thrawn relaxed against him immediately, snuggling up next to Eli — far too close for polite human standards — and went back to economically devouring the cereal. His eyes stayed on the book at all times, his bare shoulder pressed up against Eli’s, their thighs touching. Eli froze at the sudden contact, his face turning beet red.

“Uh, a little farther back, please?” he said, giving the alien a look. Thrawn gazed back at him, uncomprehending. They were so close that he had to tilt his head back at a sharp angle to meet Eli’s eyes. “Scoot back,” Eli told him, this time waving Thrawn off with his hand for extra clarity. “Don’t sit so close to me.”

Thrawn shook his head and stayed put. He balanced the bowl of cereal in his lap and tapped the encyclopedia again. “I need to see,” he said. “You will read me; I will see and learn.”

Eli sighed loudly at that, but he supposed it would be too much effort to argue. He shifted against the couch, trying to get comfortable with Thrawn’s elbow digging into his hip, and tilted the book so they could both see.

“Faience,” he read. “Term generally descriptive of glazed pottery and earthenware, but originally, and in its strictest sense, the French word for the _porzellana di Faenza,_ a type of majolica made—”

Thrawn’s mouth was full, but he managed to interrupt Eli anyway, urgently pointing at the words _porzellana di Faenza._ Eli paused, waiting for Thrawn to finish swallowing so he could speak.

“Why?” Thrawn asked as soon as his mouth was clear, tapping the words again. His voice came out raspy; rather than answer right away, Eli leaned forward and grabbed the water bottle off the coffee table. He snapped the seal off the cap and handed it to Thrawn, who gazed at it for just a moment before tilting his head back and drinking.

The whole thing. In one swig. 

Eli watched in concern, his lips parted for words he never said, as Thrawn drank the entire water bottle down casually and then leaned forward to place the empty back on the table. “Why?” he said again, a little breathless as he tapped the words.

“Why what?” asked Eli. “What’s your question?”

Thrawn hesitated, then — if it were possible — leaned even closer to Eli and took a good, hard look at the italicized words. “ _Porzellana di Faenza,_ ” he read haltingly, his pronunciation matching Eli’s almost perfectly. He indicated the words directly preceding it, then tapped the Italian words once more. “It is different,” he said. “Why?”

“ _Oh_ ,” said Eli, suddenly understanding. “You mean why are these words slanted when the others aren’t?”

“Slanted?” Thrawn considered the word carefully before he nodded and curled back against Eli’s side. His bowl of Cap’n Crunch was almost empty.

“It’s called italics,” Eli said. “The words _porzellana di Faenza_ are in a different language, so they slant the words like that — they put them into italics — to show that it’s Italian, not English. English is the language we’re speaking now. Italian is the language they speak in another country, Italy.”

He realized after he said it that Thrawn probably wouldn’t understand the word ‘country,’ but Thrawn didn’t question him on it, so Eli let it go. He wasn’t sure he was ready to tackle an explanation of national boundaries and culture with someone who currently had the vocabulary of a toddler. He turned back to the passage, found his spot, and kept reading.

“A type of majolica made in Faenza, Italy. The term is used in English to designate any earthenware of coarse texture, covered with an opaque enamel—” There was no way in hell Thrawn understood any of this. “—upon which decoration may be applied in vitrifiable paint, and fired.”

Thrawn tipped the last of the cereal into his mouth and once again interrupted Eli, this time pointing out the black dot at the end of the sentence.

“That’s a period,” Eli told him. “It’s there to show that you’re done talking. It’s like a break between sentences.”

Thrawn nodded contemplatively. His eyes scanned up to the start of the paragraph again as he chewed.

“You still thirsty?” Eli asked him. He mimed drinking, then pointed at the bottle of water, and Thrawn nodded at once. “I’ll go get you some more,” Eli offered. “Let me up.”

Thrawn shifted back to the other side of the couch. He accepted the book when Eli handed it to him, keeping his thumb against the page to save his spot. When Eli returned from the kitchen, this time bringing several bottles of water with him, Thrawn had propped the book open on the table and was scanning the page, absently opening the protein bar Eli had given him at the same time.

“French also is a language?” he asked as Eli set the water down. Eli hesitated, taken off-guard by the question.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. He looked over Thrawn’s shoulder, rereading the paragraph to figure out how Thrawn had learned this. 

“Some of this to me, I understand,” Thrawn said gravely. “Other some of this, not much.”

Eli winced as he mentally untangled that grammar. It seemed like Thrawn learned best from example and didn’t particularly mind correction, so he rearranged the words for him and said, “I understand some of this, but not all of it.”

Thrawn nodded. “Some, but not all.”

“Well, that’s okay,” Eli told him. “I mean, that’s normal. Actually, you’re picking up English _really_ fast already.”

Thrawn watched him steadily, either not understanding the praise or unaffected by it. “I understand ‘term generally descriptive of,’” he said, indicating the open encyclopedia as he said it. “I understand by … listen to you, learn words, ah … by learning of different _species_ of words.”

“You understand through context,” Eli told him. “And it’s not ‘species of words.’ We usually say ‘parts of speech.’”

“Through _context_ ,” Thrawn agreed. “But I don’t understand ‘glazed pottery’ and ‘earthenware.’ Explain.”

Where had he picked up the word _explain_? Eli wondered. Had he heard Eli say that one already, or was it from the TV? And for that matter — while he was questioning these things — why the hell was Thrawn so interested in faience? It must be similar to a word from his native language, Eli mused — maybe even identical to something important, like the name of his home planet or something like that. 

“Okay,” said Eli, thinking it over. “You stay here and eat your protein bar. Let me go get something.”

Obediently, Thrawn stayed put, eating the protein bar much faster than he’d picked through the Cap’n Crunch. Eli disappeared into his bedroom, fetched his phone off the charger, and hurried back. He pressed his thumb against the home button several times as he walked until the damn thing finally recognized his print and then sat down next to Thrawn, already opening up a browser.

“Here’s earthenware,” he said, typing it into Google images. Thrawn leaned closer, and they both watched as the grey loading symbol twirled over a white screen. “It, uh, it takes a while to load,” said Eli apologetically. “We don’t have great Internet out here.”

And he knew Thrawn didn’t understand all that, but the words came out anyway. Luckily, Thrawn seemed willing to pick and choose his battles, and he was more interested in the earthenware than finding out what Internet was. He stayed silent as the images slowly loaded, the blank frames showing up long before the images themselves.

When the first photo finally popped into view, Thrawn sucked in a sharp breath and sat up straight, an intense look of interest on his face. He reached for Eli’s phone and then paused, stopping just centimeters away from Eli’s hand, silently asking for permission.

“Go ahead,” Eli told him reluctantly, handing over the phone.

Thrawn held it gingerly, but not quite gingerly enough for Eli’s liking; he appeared more comfortable with the device than Eli expected. Quickly, he scrolled through the photos, selecting one every now and then for further study, then banishing it just as naturally as if he’d been handling smartphones his entire life. 

He stopped suddenly, eyes narrowing, and expanded a photo of a ceramic hot pot. Leaning forward, Thrawn used his free hand to pull the encyclopedia closer. He put the phone right next to it, juxtaposing the ceramic hot pot with the photo in the encyclopedia that he’d pointed out earlier — the black-and-white photo of a Dutch faience plate.

“They are the same, yet different,” Thrawn said.

Eli nodded encouragingly. “That’s right. One’s a hot pot and one’s a plate. We use the hot pot to cook food and the plate to serve it.”

The look Thrawn gave him was somewhat pained. “The same _people_ ,” he said. He laid the phone down on the page right next to the photo and traced the pattern on the Dutch plate, then hovered his finger over the decorations painted on the hot pot.

“The same people?” Eli asked, eyebrows furrowed. “No, they were done by different people. That plate is really old, Thrawn. The hot pot is new.”

“Read to me,” Thrawn said, brushing aside Eli’s correction with a wave of his hand. He indicated the caption on the Dutch plate.

“Dutch faience plate with Japanese decorations, about 1700,” said Eli, patiently rereading the sentence. “See what I mean? 1700 is a year. It’s hundreds of years ago. The same guy couldn't have made the hot pot, he'd be dead—”

Thrawn tapped the screen of Eli’s phone, calling up the caption on the hot plot. Haltingly, he read, “Japanese … keramick … do-na-be hot pot.”

Eli checked Thrawn’s reading with a frown. “Japanese _ceramic_ donabe hot pot,” he corrected automatically — but his eyes kept returning to that first word. “They’re both Japanese,” he murmured to himself. “Or at least, Japanese-style. Is that what you meant earlier, when you said ‘same people’? You meant it’s the same culture? Same style?”

“Culture, style,” Thrawn agreed. “ _Donabe_ — that word is not your language. Not English. It means earthenware pot?”

Eli hesitated, then took his phone from Thrawn and typed the word into the search bar. When he saw the result, he huffed out a laugh. “Yup. It’s the Japanese term for _earthenware pot,_ ” he said. He shot Thrawn a sharp look. “How’d you know?”

“Context,” said Thrawn. When Eli only continued to stare at him, he raised a hand and gently touched his own lips. “You say English words very fast, with…” He screwed up his face; Eli got the impression he was tracking back over the night so far, searching for the correct term in his memory. “With arrogant?” he guessed. “But you say ‘donabe’ without arrogant. You…”

“Hesitate,” Eli supplied.

“Hesitate, yes,” said Thrawn. He raised an eyebrow. “And arrogant? The correct term, please?”

“Uh, confidence,” Eli said. “I guess. And while we’re on the subject, I think you might mean I _pronounce_ English words with confidence. ‘Pronounce’ sort of describes the way your lips and tongue move as you speak; it’s how you form the words, physically. ‘Say’ is a more general term.”

He indicated his lips and tongue as he spoke, but regretted it immediately when Thrawn’s sharp eyes lingered on his mouth. Uncomfortably, Eli returned his attention to the phone, remembered what they were doing, and erased the word ‘earthenware’ from Google Images.

“Here,” he said, beckoning Thrawn closer. “I’ll show you glazed pottery next.”

Thrawn scrolled through these images with just as much enthusiasm as he’d shown for the earthenware. It was strange, Eli thought — personally, he’d never found pottery very interesting. Paintings were okay, and he’d always been jealous of his friends who could draw, but sculptures and ceramics bored him to tears, even when he’d been forced to muddle through his own in an elective ceramics course junior year.

But to Thrawn, it looked like there was nothing more interesting in the entire world than the cheap glazed pots revealed to him by Google Images. There was a look on his face almost akin to hunger; his eyes were half-lidded but sharp at the same time, tracking over every single image as if he needed to commit them to memory.

When he got to a row of images labeled ‘shop glazed pottery,’ he paused, his lips mouthing the words silently. Eli watched Thrawn’s eyes shoot down to the numbers below each ugly, dull-colored pot.

“Numbers, yes?” said Thrawn, his finger hovering over the price on one of the pots. Eli glanced at it, eyebrows raised. $460 for _that_?

“Yes, those are numbers,” he said neutrally.

“On the page, also,” Thrawn murmured, indicating the open encyclopedia with a sweep of his hand. “You will teach me how to read numbers?”

“Uh, sure,” said Eli, shifting in his seat. “If you want.”

Thrawn’s eyes glinted as he nodded, but he kept staring at the glazed pottery, unwilling to let this particular subject go so he could learn to count. “Later?” he murmured.

“Later,” Eli agreed. He reached past Thrawn carefully, snagging the encyclopedia by its corner and pulling it closer to him. “Would you like me to keep reading?” he asked.

Thrawn didn’t answer for a moment, hesitating over the pictures of pottery on Eli’s phone. His eyes shifted toward the encyclopedia and after a long hesitation — clearly torn between the two — he closed the pages of search results and handed Eli back his phone.

Eli kicked his feet up on the coffee table again, getting comfortable before he began. Beside him, Thrawn lowered himself down carefully, mindful of the wound on his chest and the bruises dotting his body; he stopped only when his head was resting on Eli’s shoulder, giving him a good view of the encyclopedia. Eli froze, but Thrawn only snuggled closer, his legs curled up against Eli’s thigh, the hair on top of his head tickling Eli’s chin.

“Read,” Thrawn said placidly, eyes fixed on the page before him.

With his mouth suddenly going dry and his cheeks inexplicably flushed, Eli read.


	2. Chapter 2

Eli used his shoulder to push open the front door. He slouched inside, a plastic bag of toiletries in his left hand, and had barely stepped over his own threshold when he stopped, sensing that there was something _living and breathing_ on the floor close to his foot.

“Help,” said Thrawn.

Eli looked down. The alien was seated cross-legged on the floor, just to the side of the front door, with his back to the wall. Still shirtless, he was clad only his uniform trousers and had Eli’s battered old laptop perched on his knees.

“I just got home from work,” said Eli wearily. “Can it wait?”

Solemnly, Thrawn shook his head. His expression didn’t change when Eli let out an exasperated sigh and tossed the bag of toiletries onto the couch. Eli slid down the wall until he was sitting next to Thrawn and held out his hands for the laptop. 

It didn’t take him long to figure out what was going on. The browser was open to a page of Google results featuring, among other things, an 1872 issue of The Indianapolis Journal, a military document on high-strength steel welding, and a WWII-related article from the Manchester Historical Society.

Typed into the search bar were the words ‘ _ert hrstera_.’

“Ah,” said Eli, lips twitching into a frown. “What are you trying to spell here?”

“Art History,” Thrawn said, pronouncing the words crisply as he leaned close to Eli to see the screen. Eli didn’t bother trying to pull back or remind Thrawn it wasn’t polite to cuddle with strangers; he’d gotten pretty used to it over the past 24 hours.

“Well, I see where you went wrong,” Eli said. He erased the search results and slowly typed the words ‘art history’ correctly, so Thrawn could learn from his mistakes. When he was finished, he tapped the enter key and passed the laptop back to Thrawn as the first results started to load. “Is this what you’ve been doing all day?” Eli asked. “Looking stuff up on the Internet?”

“I cleaned,” Thrawn said. 

Eli furrowed his eyebrows. “You mean you showered?” he said. 

With his eyes set intently on the screen, Thrawn shook his head. “Cleaned,” he repeated. 

Eli gazed at him a moment longer, then pushed himself off the wall and to his feet. A quick glance around the living room showed him what Thrawn meant — the place was spotless. All visible surfaces had been dusted, the floors had been swept, the empty beer cans and occasional food wrappers had been thrown away. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” Eli protested, looking down at Thrawn. The alien met his eyes steadily.

“I wanted to,” he said.

Eli felt his heart melt a little.

“This…” Thrawn continued, sweeping his hand around the living room. “Bad. Disgusting. Stinky.”

“Okay, okay,” said Eli, his heart un-melting at once. “Whatever, dude.”

“Gross home,” Thrawn went on placidly. “Like garbage can crash.”

He mimed an explosion with his hands. Eli gave him an unimpressed look.

“Am I correct in guessing that you didn’t shower today?” he asked.

Thrawn glanced up at him, baffled. It didn’t really matter if he understood the question, though; Eli could see the sweat and grime still coated on Thrawn’s skin from his crash the day before. So, that was a no.

“Come on,” he said, nudging Thrawn’s shoulder and taking the laptop back. He pretended not to notice how much resistance Thrawn put up on that front; he had to practically pry the guy's fingers off to get the laptop away. “You can look at art history later,” Eli told him, rolling to his knees and then pushing to his feet. He set the laptop aside and held his hand out to Thrawn, who only glanced at it in confusion before climbing to his feet much more gracefully than Eli had.

“What does _shower_ mean?” Thrawn asked.

“It means you’re bad, disgusting, stinky,” Eli said. Not that he particularly minded, really. He hopped over to the couch and grabbed the plastic bag again. “Come here, I got you some gifts.”

Thrawn raised an eyebrow and stepped forward, peeking into the open bag. He picked through the items gingerly, examining the toothbrush Eli had bought for him with great interest before moving on to the stick of deodorant. He uncapped it, held it to his nose, and sniffed. The neutral expression on his face seemed to twitch.

“You like the smell?” Eli asked, gesturing to his own nose.

Thrawn cast his eyes around the room and didn’t respond. He dropped the deodorant back in the bag and rooted through it again, this time pulling out a pair of soft grey sweatpants, size large. His eyebrows shot up as he felt the material.

“Mine?” he asked Eli, looking down at the dirt-stained uniform trousers he was wearing.

“Yup,” said Eli. “That’s what ‘gift’ means. This way you don’t have to slum around in those fucked-up sci-fi clothes anymore.”

Thrawn unfolded the pants and held them up to his hips, measuring the length of the legs with an appraising eye. He nodded his approval. 

“Now, come on,” Eli said, grabbing Thrawn by the wrist. “I’ll show you the shower.”

Thrawn followed him willingly, not resisting at all as Eli led him down the hall. They passed the cramped hallway bathroom (and Eli noticed the slight tilt of Thrawn’s head as he did so), only stopping when they reached the door to the master bedroom.

“This is where I sleep,” Eli explained as he let go of Thrawn’s wrist to open the door. “The bathroom here is larger. And you can actually take a bath instead of a shower if you want to, because there’s a full tub…” Catching the haze of confusion in Thrawn’s eyes, Eli cut himself off and said, “You’ll see.”

He stepped inside the bedroom, followed a second later by Thrawn. They crossed the room in a series of hesitant half-steps, with Thrawn pausing over and over again to examine some aspect of Eli’s room, and Eli waiting patiently each time, only moving forward in occasional attempts to lure Thrawn further. When this stopped working, Eli back-tracked and forcibly removed a PS3 controller from Thrawn’s hands.

“That doesn’t even work anymore,” he said, exasperated. Thrawn didn’t seem offended by the controller’s confiscation; he turned his attention immediately to the console itself, running his hand through the layer of dust that lay over it. “Come on, no time for video games,” Eli urged him. “Bad-disgusting-stinky, remember?”

Thrawn nodded absently and allowed himself to be led the rest of the way. Inside the bathroom, Eli stepped past Thrawn to turn the shower on; he waited a minute or two, adjusting it to the temperature he himself preferred, while Thrawn examined the cheesy watercolor paintings of angels Eli’s late mother had hung up all over the bathroom walls.

Eli stuck his hand beneath the nozzle and found the water nice and warm. He pulled his hand out and turned to Thrawn.

“Okay,” he said, gesturing for Thrawn to join him next to the tub. “Put your hand under the spray.”

When Thrawn only eyed him, not comprehending, Eli took his hand and guided it to the water. The skin around Thrawn’s eyes seemed to tighten and his hand tensed in Eli’s, but he didn’t flinch or pull back.

“Does it feel okay?” Eli asked him. “It’s not too hot, is it?”

Thrawn hesitated, lips parting as he prepared to speak. He pulled his hand out of Eli’s grasp and reached for the faucet, touching it lightly before turning the knob slightly to the left. He watched the spray closely for a second, as if waiting for the water pressure to change, then frowned and stuck his hand back under the spray.

“Here,” said Eli. He turned the faucet all the way to the left and waited for the temperature to change, guiding Thrawn’s hand back to the water. “Cold,” he said, passing Thrawn’s fingers through the icy spray quickly. He turned the faucet all the way to the right and waited again, this time passing Thrawn’s hand through even faster. “Hot,” he said.

Thrawn nodded and adjusted the faucet again at once. He bent down a little, resting his knees on the edge of the tub, and ducked his head beneath the spray to get a closer look at the faucet. Frowning, he craned his neck and looked back at Eli.

“What’s wrong?” Eli asked, studying Thrawn’s face for clues. Thrawn only stared back at him, lacking the vocabulary to put his concern into words. With no other way to gather information, Eli glanced around the bathroom and tried to figure out what his own concerns would be if the situation were reversed.

When he looked back at Thrawn, he found the alien examining Eli’s shampoo.

“Ah,” said Eli. “Is that what’s wrong?”

Thrawn turned the bottle over in his hands, scanning the label before glancing back at Eli with one eyebrow raised. Eli took the bottle from him gently.

“It’s shampoo,” he said. “It’s soap for your hair. Like this…”

He made sure the cap was on tight and then turned the bottle over, aiming it at his open palm. He mimed squirting shampoo into his hand, put the bottle down, and rubbed both hands together. When he had a good-sized imaginary froth going, he raised his hands and scrubbed it into his hair.

Thrawn’s lips turned down at the corners. The haze of confusion in his eyes only grew stronger. Maybe they didn’t have shampoo where he was from, Eli thought, returning Thrawn’s frown. Or maybe it just came in a different form. He put the bottle of shampoo back on his rack and picked up two others.

“This is conditioner,” he said, aiming the first bottle at his skull. He pretended to drizzle conditioner over his hair, then put it down right next to the shampoo for extra emphasis. “And this is soap,” he said, brandishing the next bottle. He mimed out a shower, rubbing imaginary soap over his armpits and arms. When he stopped, hands on his hips, he saw a somber look on Thrawn’s face that seemed to signify a total lack of comprehension.

“Well, fuck,” Eli said gently. “I don’t know how to explain it any better than that, bud.”

Thrawn couldn’t possibly understand what ‘fuck’ meant, but his eyebrows twitched and he nodded at the rest of Eli’s words.

“Show me,” he suggested.

Eli blinked. “I just did. I—”

Thrawn edged past Eli, away from the edge of the tub, and then grabbed Eli by the shoulders. He steered Eli insistently toward the shower.

“Show me,” he repeated. He picked up one of the bottles and put it in Eli’s hand, then pushed him once more toward the tub. “Example,” he said.

“What?”

“I learn by example,” Thrawn said, pronouncing each word with emphasis. He pointed at Eli. “You—” His finger shifted toward the tub. “—show—” He turned the finger back on himself. “—me how to do shower.”

“How to _take_ a shower,” Eli corrected automatically, before he processed the true meaning of Thrawn’s request. His mouth fell open, then clamped shut again as his face turned bright red. Thrawn’s head tilted to the side, his eyes flickering over Eli’s cheeks as he absorbed the change in color.

“Hurts?” Thrawn asked.

Still blushing, Eli furrowed his brows and shook his head. “What? No, it doesn’t hurt. It’s just…”

“Ungood,” Thrawn suggested.

“It’s not _ungood_ , exactly—” Eli started, then shook his head. “I mean it’s not _bad_ , goddammit. It’s just … kind of…”

Thrawn stared at him guilelessly, and Eli couldn’t help but glance down at the alien’s bare blue chest. His chiseled blue chest. His very muscular blue chest covered in rugged, sexy scars. He scrubbed at his face with an almost silent sigh.

“Aw, Jesus,” he muttered into his hands. “Okay, fine. I’ll show you how to shower.”

He tried not to notice the bright, almost puppy-like expression on Thrawn’s face when he acquiesced. Scowling and blushing at the same time, Eli unbuttoned his work shirt and cast it aside. He slipped his shoes off, tugged off his socks, and then stepped out of his trousers, but stopped there. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of his boxers, hesitated, and decided to keep them on.

“Okay,” he said, stepping into the tub. It was completely, 100% uncomfortable to feel hot water seeping into his underwear, but he did his best to ignore it. “Like this,” he said to Thrawn. He stepped completely under the spray, letting the water hit his face and wet down his hair. With his eyes closed, he turned around and ran his fingers through his hair until it was soaked through and plastered to his forehead. Then he palmed the water out of his eyes and reached for the shampoo.

Cold fingers brushed his hand as Thrawn handed it to him.

“Thanks,” said Eli. He cracked open an eye to make sure Thrawn hadn’t followed him in and practically sagged with relief when he spotted the alien waiting just outside the tub. “Okay,” he said, squirting shampoo into his palm. “This is shampoo, like I said earlier. It cleans your hair. You rub it in like this…”

Vigorously, he scrubbed shampoo into his hair. He could feel Thrawn’s eyes burning into him the whole time, and the only way Eli could defend against it was by closing his own eyes and pretending he was alone. 

“Help?” Thrawn asked.

Eli reluctantly opened his eyes again, turning to face Thrawn. “What?”

“Help?” Thrawn said again, gesturing to his own hair.

“Oh.” Eli’s face spasmed; he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to frown or smile more. “No, I’m fine. Thank you.”

Thrawn clasped his hands behind his back, giving Eli a doubtful look as he did so. But he didn’t offer again. Eli retreated back under the shower spray and closed his eyes again, rinsing the shampoo from his hair. He worked through the next step in silence, confident Thrawn wouldn’t need further instruction for the conditioner.

“Now for the soap,” he said, grabbing the bottle from the rack. He spread it over his chest and stomach first, wincing as the suds traveled down his body and soaked into the waistband of his boxers. Thrawn glanced down, following the same trail with a frown, and abruptly Eli found himself forced to turn away. He simply couldn’t take it; that intense gaze centered on his boxers was too much.

Facing the wall, he stepped sideways into the shower spray and washed the soap away.

“You get it now?” he asked, when his heart had stopped pounding and the flush had faded from his cheeks. He turned to find Thrawn studying him with a line between his eyebrows.

“I get it,” he said, but he didn’t sound certain. And his tone wasn't quite right, either, almost like he thought Eli was telling him to physically _get_ something rather than asking if he understand.

“Hand me a towel, then,” Eli said. He pointed over Thrawn’s shoulder at the towel rack and breathed a sigh of relief when Thrawn understood at once, and even managed to select Eli’s favorite of the towels without being told. As Eli stepped out of the shower, burying his face in the towel, he heard the distinct rustle of clothing and froze.

Hesitantly, he raised his hand, peeking at Thrawn from behind the towel. Thrawn’s trousers were folded neatly over the counter.

He wasn’t wearing underwear.

“Oh,” said Eli, his voice coming out as a squeak. He buried his face in the towel again before Thrawn could make eye contact. “Uh, okay, so … normally we don’t get _entirely_ undressed when other people are in the room.”

He heard a splash of water and glanced up again. Thrawn had stepped into the tub. He showed no self-consciousness whatsoever — hadn’t even turned away when Eli looked up. Mouth twisting, Eli panned down and took a quick look at the area beneath Thrawn’s waist.

Oh, of course. Why was he even surprised? Of _course_ the alien was hung like a horse.

Thrawn stepped under the shower spray, but unlike Eli, he didn’t stand placidly beneath it. Instead, he reached up and detached the shower nozzle with a deft hand, maneuvering it around his head to soak his hair as economically as possible. Eli watched him for a moment, then remembered where he was and finished drying off.

He left the towel wrapped around his waist for reasons he didn’t want to even think about. Instead of leaving, he stepped backwards and sat heavily on the closed toilet seat, watching Thrawn as he showered.

Hell, it wasn’t like Thrawn minded. Why _shouldn’t_ he stay?

Inside the shower, Thrawn replaced the shower nozzle and brushed long fingers through his hair. Drops of water trickled down his face as he reached for the shampoo bottle, obediently following the steps Eli had laid out for him. He squeezed a portion of shampoo into his palm and swept it into his hair all at once.

Suddenly, Eli remembered what Thrawn had said when he’d first shown him how shampoo worked. His mouth went dry as a thought occurred to him; he cleared his throat, decided to go for it, and cleared his throat again.

“You, uh …” he started, voice coming out dry. “You want some help?”

Thrawn paused with both hands in his hair and stared at Eli, his face unreadable. 

“Help?” Eli repeated, gesturing to his own head. “With your hair?”

For a long moment, he thought he’d misread the situation horribly. Thrawn’s expression didn’t change, and in the silence that ensued, Eli couldn’t help but interpret those blank features as slightly hostile. He squirmed on his seat and was just about to retract the offer when Thrawn inclined his head in a slight nod.

“Really?” asked Eli, who’d already convinced himself it wasn’t going to happen. He jumped to his feet, taking care to keep the towel in place, and made a spinning motion with his hand. “Sit down, then,” he said. “I can’t reach you if you’re standing up.”

Thrawn turned back toward the shower spray and held his open palms beneath it first, washing the suds from his hands. Eli didn’t complain; it gave him a nice side-view of the long, thick cock resting against Thrawn’s thigh. Then, of course, he realized he was ogling his new alien roommate and quickly looked away. 

After a moment, Thrawn sat down, taking the shower nozzle with him. He let it rest inside the tub alongside his thigh, with the spray facedown against the porcelain. Tentatively, Eli approached him, perching on the edge of the tub where it met the wall. He reached up and slid his fingertips into Thrawn’s hair, letting them brush lightly over the alien’s scalp.

Thrawn’s head tilted up instantly. He pushed back against Eli’s hands, increasing the pressure as his eyes lid closed. 

“Okay,” Eli murmured. He brushed the shampoo through Thrawn’s hair slowly, working it up to a froth beneath his hands. “This is fine. I can handle this. It’s fine.”

“Mm,” Thrawn hummed, apparently in agreement. Or more likely, in contentment. Eli couldn’t be sure. He scratched gently at Thrawn’s scalp and the alien shifted in response, pressing his wet back against Eli’s thigh. It was a strange feeling — the hot drops of water against Thrawn’s skin — but it wasn’t unpleasant. It wasn’t unpleasant at all. 

Eli scrubbed for a while longer, losing complete track of time as the suds built up beneath his hands. He played with Thrawn’s hair, letting the blue-black strands slip between his fingers, scratching lightly at the nape of his neck and then running his fingers up to scratch behind Thrawn’s ears instead. 

Another low hum escaped from Thrawn’s throat. He tipped his head back further, until Eli could see his closed eyes and relaxed face. After a moment, smiling slightly, Eli took one hand off Thrawn’s hair and leaned over, his chest pressing against Thrawn’s back as he reached for the shower nozzle.

“Eyes closed,” he warned Thrawn — then, remembering the language barrier, he pressed his palm gently against Thrawn’s eyes and got a nod of understanding in response. He felt Thrawn’s eyelashes fluttering against his skin as he moved away.

He switched the nozzle to a more concentrated spray, passing it slowly over Thrawn’s head. The suds dissolved one bit at a time, sending cascades of soap, blood, and dirt down the back of Thrawn’s neck. He kept his eyes closed for the most part, blinking sleepily when Eli moved the nozzle farther back from his face. 

“You like that?” Eli asked, digging his nails into Thrawn’s scalp again. He smoothed his palm over Thrawn’s hair a few times, getting the last of the suds out while he kept the shower spray steady on Thrawn’s skin. He pushed Thrawn away from him gently, putting just enough room between them for him to move the shower spray down over Thrawn’s shoulders and back. 

“Yes,” Thrawn murmured, several seconds late. “I like that.”

Eli huffed out a laugh, passing the nozzle to Thrawn. “Hold this,” he said. He switched out the shampoo bottle for the conditioner and started the process all over again. It didn’t take him long to massage the conditioner into Thrawn’s hair; when he glanced over Thrawn’s shoulder, searching for the shower nozzle, he found that Thrawn’s eyes had slid closed again … and the nozzle rested on Thrawn’s left knee, with the shower head tilted so that the spray pointed casually yet directly to a spot between Thrawn’s thighs.

Blushing, Eli pulled back and switched courses. He slapped Thrawn lightly between the shoulders and cleared his throat.

“Hand me the nozzle, please,” he said, averting his eyes.

Lazily, Thrawn lifted the nozzle over his shoulder and passed it to Eli. The color in Eli’s cheeks still hadn’t faded by the time he finished rinsing Thrawn’s hair. He placed his warm hand on Thrawn’s shoulder — still cool despite the water’s temperature — and handed the nozzle back.

“Just the soap left,” he said. “You can do that on your own.”

Thrawn didn’t react immediately; his face was soft and relaxed, his eyes heavy-lidded, and it seemed to take him a moment to recalibrate and understand what was going on. Eli moved back and watched as Thrawn stood, replacing the shower nozzle and standing beneath the spray once again. 

His eyes darted down to Thrawn’s narrow hips and well-muscled thighs. He did his best to ignore the absolutely unfairly-sized erection lying flush against Thrawn’s stomach while he showered. Thrawn scrubbed himself down with economic movements, spreading the soap brusquely over his arms and then slowing down, dealing with his chest and the wound there with careful movements. He didn’t seem to mind Eli’s gaze in the slightest.

Shameless goddamn alien. This had to be a honeypot trap or something. Eli had somehow become the target of a convoluted alien infiltration scheme. He adjusted the towel around his waist, trying to hide the effect Thrawn was having on him. 

“Uh, if you don’t need my help…” he started. His voice dried up immediately when Thrawn looked his way, red eyes piercing into Eli. “Well, I’d like to get dressed,” Eli finished, forcing himself to look away.

Was it his imagination, or did Thrawn smile at that? Just a tiny bit? His eyes flicked down to the towel around Eli’s waist before he turned away, reaching for the soap bottle yet again.

“Acceptable,” Thrawn said.

Eli flushed. _Acceptable_. Where the hell had he learned _that_ word? He didn't know 'bad' but he knew 'acceptable'? Whatever, didn’t matter, move past it. He gave Thrawn an awkward, half-hearted wave, scooped his clothes up off the floor, and shuffled back into the master bedroom.

Okay, he could handle this. In the peace and quiet of his own bedroom, Eli felt the blood fade from his cheeks — and from other areas — almost at once. A sense of calmness settled over him, along with a somewhat less pleasant sense of awkwardness and embarrassment over his own behavior. 

He wiggled out of his wet underwear quickly, certain that Thrawn wouldn’t take long to join him. Without even thinking about it, he selected a fresh pair of jeans from the closet, opting for the more ‘formal’ option than what he would normally wear after work — which was typically either sweatpants or his underwear. He shoved his head through a faded old pullover, a souvenir from a long-past family trip to the Smokies. By the time he’d straightened the hem and buttoned his jeans, the sound of the shower from behind the bathroom door had stopped.

Eli bent his head and dragged the towel through his hair, ruffling it until it semi-resembled dryness. He pulled the towel away from his face only when the bathroom door swung open.

He and Thrawn stared at each other for a moment, neither of them saying anything. Then Eli’s eyes tracked down, relief flooding through him when he saw that Thrawn had opted to put his pants on before coming out.

Only … they _weren’t_ his pants. Not his old pants, at least. Thrawn was wearing the soft grey sweatpants Eli had bought for him instead.

 _Not a good choice, in retrospect,_ Eli thought, eyeing the stark outline of Thrawn’s cock beneath the fabric. Not a good choice at all.


	3. Chapter 3

It was past five when Eli pulled down his drive, keeping one hand extended across the passenger seat so the haphazard stack of library books there wouldn’t slide forward to the floor.

He parked and gathered them up in his arms, slinging his backpack from work over his shoulder at the same time. It took no small amount of juggling to turn the knob on the front door; he nudged it open with his foot and stepped inside.

And stopped right there in the doorway, mouth hanging open. His furniture was gone. No, wait — his furniture had been _moved_. The couch and armchairs and cluttered little tables left behind by his parents had all been cleared away, pushed back against the walls until a massive clear space opened up on the living room floor.

Thrawn glanced up at Eli from his plank position there, one arm extended to keep his chest off the floor, the other folded neatly behind his back. After a moment of silent eye contact, Thrawn stepped gracefully out of the position and to his feet, flexing his fingers to push himself off the floor.

“Hello,” he said, his voice resembling a low purr. Eli blushed furiously and wrenched his eyes away from Thrawn’s face. He focused on his chest instead, noting the slight sheen of sweat and the — the open edges of his wound.

“Oh, you _idiot_ ,” Eli said, almost dropping his books in exasperation. He stomped over to the nearest displaced table and deposited the books there carelessly, letting his backpack drop onto an armchair nearby. He hurried over to Thrawn as one or two of the hardbacks slipped off the stack and onto the floor. 

Thrawn stood still as Eli approached; he didn’t step back or flinch when Eli raised his hands and gently touched the gash on Thrawn’s chest.

“You reopened your goddamn wound,” Eli said. He brushed the pad of his index finger over the ragged edge of the gash, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Thrawn. “Come on,” Eli said, pushing him toward the hall bathroom. “We gotta do this over again.”

Thrawn turned on his heel with a sharp, almost military posture and allowed Eli to lead him. In the bathroom, he leaned against the counter, watching curiously as Eli sorted through the first aid kit. He hadn’t even had the chance to restock it since last time….

“You brought books?” Thrawn asked.

Eli glanced up with both hands stuffed wrist-deep in the kit and frowned. “Uh, yeah, I did,” he said, resuming his search for more butterfly bandages. “I stopped by the library after work and picked some stuff up for you. That way you won’t be so bored that you resort to one-armed push-ups and rearranging my furniture and … you know … reopening your goddamn wound.”

He poked Thrawn in the chest for emphasis, careful to make sure his finger came down on solid, uninjured muscle. “Now sit down,” he said.

He gestured absently to the toilet seat. Thrawn glanced at it, his lips twitching down in a puzzled frown, then slowly reached for his sweatpants. He shot Eli a dubious look as he slipped his fingers underneath the waistband. Eli fumbled with the package of Bandaids as he leapt forward, grabbing Thrawn by the wrist before he could pull the sweatpants down a single inch further.

“Pants _on_ ,” he stressed.

Thrawn acquiesced immediately, flipping the toilet lid closed and perching on it. He looked quietly relieved that Eli had stopped him.

“Here,” said Eli, peeling open a fresh bandage. “Lean forward.”

Thrawn obeyed, arching his back and thrusting his chest out for easy access. Eli snorted out a laugh but didn’t comment on the posture; he was sure Thrawn didn’t _mean_ for it to look slutty. Carefully, he pressed the edges of the wound together and applied the bandage, moving away slowly to make sure it would stick.

Satisfied, he turned away and fetched a clean rag from the cupboard, running it under warm water from the faucet. When he turned around again, Thrawn was patiently waiting for him. Eli pressed the rag gently against the wound, soaking up a few small, fresh drops of blood that had oozed out from beneath the bandage. 

He rinsed the rag out, this time with cool water, and turned back to Thrawn again. Without really thinking about what he was doing, he ran the rag over Thrawn’s chest and shoulders, wiping away the sheen of sweat.

Thrawn’s head tilted back, eyes sliding closed as Eli dragged the cloth down his biceps, over the soft skin on the underside of his forearms, down to his wrists. Eli took Thrawn’s hands in his, using the cloth to clean each of his fingers in turn. Then, with a sudden blush he didn’t want to think about or explain, he tossed the rag into the sink and clapped Thrawn awkwardly on the shoulder.

“All done,” he said brusquely. Thrawn’s eyes came open again slowly. “Come on,” said Eli, nudging him again. “Let me show you those books.”

With a peculiar hint of reluctance on his face, Thrawn stood, following Eli out of the bathroom. By the time they reached the living room, that reluctance had disappeared. Eli grabbed the two fallen books off the floor and slid them on top of the rest, presenting the whole lot to Thrawn as a stack.

With wide eyes and raised eyebrows, Thrawn touched the title on the first book.

“Art history,” he read, then looked up at Eli in delight. He snapped the book toward himself with a deft flick of his fingers and let it fall open in his hands, eyes scanning rapidly over the first page.

“Yup,” said Eli. “The first two are mostly on Western art, but then I found this one—” He juggled the books in his hands, snagging one from the middle of the stack. Thrawn glanced at it curiously but didn’t take it, unwilling to surrender the one he already held. “This one’s called _Art Through the Ages,_ and it’s a textbook, so it’s got more of a broad scope. It covers pretty much everything — well, everything on Earth, anyway.”

“Textbook?” Thrawn repeated, his eyes flicking up and down the stack of books in Eli’s hands.

“That means it’s a book for learning,” Eli told him. “A reference book. Teachers use them to help their students learn a new subject.”

Thrawn didn’t indicate whether he understood or not. He bent over at the waist, turning his head at an angle so he could read the titles. Eli laughed again, trying to disguise the sound as a cough, and held the books up higher so Thrawn didn’t have to bend down.

“What are this two?” Thrawn asked, indicating two smaller books in the stack. Eli turned the pile around to take a look.

“ _These_ two,” he corrected, “are English for learners. They’ll help you pick up the language faster. These, too...”

He fanned the books out on a nearby table and indicated a handful of children’s books — visual dictionaries, simply encyclopedias, picture books. Thrawn’s nose wrinkled at the sight of them. 

“Yeah, I thought you might react that way,” Eli said. “That’s why I’m instituting a rule. You can read as much of the art history books as you want, but you _have_ to read one of these other books per day. Or read one of them for at least half an hour, if you can’t finish it. Understand?”

Thrawn’s eyes narrowed. His grip tightened on the single art history book in his hands. “Repeat,” he said.

With a sigh, Eli ran through the instructions again, more simply this time and with lots of exaggerated pointing at the different types of books. When he was done, Thrawn still looked concerned.

“But there are more than two,” he said, staring from one children’s book to the next.

Nonplussed, Eli said, “Uh, yeah. Yeah, buddy, there’s six of them.”

“You said ‘these two.’”

Eli glanced down at the books and tracked back over everything he’d said, coming up blank. Seeing this, Thrawn snapped his fingers — getting Eli’s attention immediately — and said, “These two are English for learners. They’ll help you pick up the language faster. These two…”

Trailing off, he gestured at the children’s books.

“Oh,” said Eli, posture sagging as he understood. “No, I — I was saying ‘too,’ not…”

Fuck, but it was hard to explain the difference to someone who barely spoke English at all. Eli scouted around for a piece of paper and a pen.

“T-O-O,” said Eli, spelling it out on paper. “That means … well, it’s like earlier, when I walked down the hall to the bathroom, and you went, _too_. Whereas T-W-O means...” He held up his pen for Thrawn to see. “One pen.” He grabbed another and held that up, too. “Two pens.”

“I understand,” Thrawn said almost before Eli finished the sentence. He closed the art history book and held it to his chest with one hand; with his other, he selected a children’s encyclopedia. Eli didn’t miss the pointed and somewhat sarcastic look Thrawn gave him as he stacked the two books together.

“You hungry?” Eli asked. “I was gonna make a chicken stir fry.”

Thrawn’s eyes flickered down to Eli’s lips. “Yes,” he said levelly, not glancing away. “You cook. I will replace the tables and … other, smaller tables.”

"Chairs," Eli said, hiding his smile. He moved into the kitchen without another word; as he got the vegetables he needed out of the fridge, he could hear the quiet scrape of furniture against the living room floor. The TV switched on a moment later, barely audible. 

Straining his ears, Eli could just make out the gentle tones of Bob Ross.

* * *

“I fixed your telephone,” said Thrawn casually. 

Eli glanced up from the pot of rice he was stirring, reaching reflexively for the phone in his back pocket. Last he’d checked, it was working just fine.

“Come,” said Thrawn, waving Eli toward the doorway.

“I’m cooking dinner,” Eli protested. Then, narrowing his eyes, “What telephone?”

Thrawn only beckoned him more urgently, saying nothing. With a sigh, Eli searched for a paper towel and rested his stirring spoon on it, too lazy to rinse the sauce from it and put it away. He followed Thrawn out of the room and down the hall, his eyebrows furrowing when he realized they only had one plausible destination.

“Have you been hanging out in my bedroom this whole time?” Eli asked. "I thought you were watching Bob Ross!"

In answer, Thrawn turned the knob to Eli’s bedroom door and generously waved him in. Eli took a step inside and glanced around cautiously; it wasn’t long before he saw what Thrawn was talking about when he said ‘telephone’ — especially since Thrawn stepped past him almost immediately and stood next to his repair project with a faint but unmistakably proud smile on his face.

“Telephone,” he said.

“That’s not a telephone. That’s my PS3,” Eli corrected, feeling dazed. He looked at the glowing blue light on the console. “That thing hasn’t worked in years.”

Thrawn edged back a little, silently inviting Eli to step up and give it a try. Eli moved forward with what must have been a disappointing lack of eagerness; he ran his hand over the top of the console and found it running hot. A set of tools, no doubt harvested from his garage, lay on the entertainment center nearby, and there was a telltale whir of power coming from inside the casing.

When he craned his neck and bent over at the waist, he saw that Thrawn had even located all the long-lost cables and hooked the PS3 up to the TV.

“This thing stopped working like a year after I got out of the Navy,” said Eli. He turned the TV on, expecting his hopes and dreams to fizzle out right then — but when he turned it to the correct channel, the PlayStation home screen was already there waiting for him.

“Now you can call,” said Thrawn, evidently quite self-satisfied. Eli shot him a quizzical look and decided to play along.

“Call who?” he asked. 

“Crewmates,” said Thrawn with a shrug. “Your … your _supervisor_.” He said the word carefully, trying it out for the first time. Eli guessed he’d learned it from a sitcom earlier that day. “Your Kinggeorge.”

“It’s just King,” Eli corrected him. That one was _definitely_ from TV. “King is his title. George is his name — and we don’t have a king, we have a president. And I’m definitely not calling _him_.”

Thrawn nodded, as if to say ‘makes sense to me.’ Eli eyed him a moment longer as he ran his fingers over the PS3 controller. It hadn’t escaped his notice that Thrawn hadn’t suggested Eli call family or friends, only work-related acquaintances and governmental higher-ups. Did that mean Thrawn didn’t have any family or friends himself? Or did it just mean that he’d catalogued all the items in Eli’s house and decided Eli’s parents were dead (true) and that he also just didn’t like to hang out much with other people (also true)?

And how the hell did an alien know how to fix a PlayStation 3? 

* * *

They had dinner in the living room, with Thrawn sitting on the floor between the coffee table and the sofa as he picked through the stir fry Eli had given him, not seeming particularly pleased or displeased by the taste. His eyes flitted between the TV and a handful of the library books Eli had brought him — he was just barely skirting the edges of Eli’s rules, with two art history books open to different sections and a single ESL book propped between them. 

When Eli had finished his food, he lifted his foot and tapped Thrawn on the shoulder.

“You gotta move,” he told him.

Thrawn glanced back, studied Eli’s face, and shifted away. He took his books with him, stacking them neatly beneath his arm and watching as Eli stood. His ramrod posture and patient gaze gave Eli the uneasy impression that Thrawn was waiting for orders.

“I’m just getting my stuff,” he explained, feeling awkward under Thrawn’s unrelenting stare. He bent over the backpack he’d left on the armchair, rifling through it for his papers. “I brought some work home with me,” he said. “You can sit back down on the floor if you want, but we’re gonna have to share the table.”

He hauled out a sheaf of papers, a dictionary, and his work laptop. Thrawn didn’t move as Eli laid them all out on the coffee table; his eyes swept over the title of the dictionary and then pinned Eli down again.

“ _Pǔtōnghuà ma_ _?_ ” Thrawn asked.

Eli stared at him, lips parted and brain stuttering. It wasn't that he didn't understand; he understood perfectly. But how did Thrawn—?

Belatedly, he remembered the day he'd found Thrawn in the woods. The first thing he'd asked him — or close to the first — was if he spoke English or Mandarin. And he'd asked that question in Mandarin, too. But for Thrawn, who wasn't fluent in any human languages, to pick out one from the next — to remember the exact words and tones even as he was injured and half-conscious — and then to repeat the same words back, days later, with no better prompt than the word 'work'... it was insane.

Eli realized Thrawn was staring at him, waiting for an answer.

“Oh,” he said lamely, looking down at the dictionary. “Yeah, it’s Chinese.”

Thrawn was undeniably interested now. He laid his books down on the very edge of the coffee table and approached Eli’s work arrangement on his knees in the most graceful shuffle Eli had ever seen. While Eli powered the laptop up, Thrawn examined the Mandarin-English dictionary, turning each thin page with care. He skimmed the entries quickly, with that strange sort of piercing concentration Eli was starting to expect from him.

“This is work?” Thrawn asked him. 

Eli glanced up halfway through typing in his password, cursed as his fingers slipped, and started over again from the beginning. “Yeah, it’s work,” he said distractedly. “I’m gonna have to turn the TV off, too. Sorry. I just can’t concentrate with background noise unless it’s like, opera music or something.”

Thrawn didn’t seem bothered; he fetched the remote before Eli could ask him to and turned the TV off without even glancing at it. His eyes were fixed on the pages of Chinese characters laid out before him. 

“I’m a translator,” Eli told him when Thrawn just continued to stare. Then, because Thrawn still hadn’t looked away from the dictionary and it was starting to freak him out, “Do you, uh … do you speak any other languages?”

Thrawn finally glanced up at him. He seemed to remember where he was all at once and sat back on his haunches. With one last look at Eli’s dictionary, he turned back to his own books instead.

“Some,” he said. He flipped his art history textbook open. “You work, I sleep,” he said decisively. 

Eli had already started to turn back to his computer when that last word registered with him. “Sleep?” he asked. He studied Thrawn’s face; he didn’t look sleepy. He looked alert; his eyes were sharp and his posture was rigid as he scanned the images in the book before him.

“Sleep-learn,” Thrawn explained. Then, glancing sideways at Eli, a look of uncertainty came over his face. “Sleep-study?”

Sleep-learn? Sleep-study? Eli stared at Thrawn with undisguised confusion, ticking over the possibilities in his mind. The closest thing he could think of was…

“Do you mean _meditate_?” he asked.

Thrawn shrugged and turned back to his book. Of course, Eli thought with a scowl, there was really no point in asking Thrawn what he meant. 

“Well, you do your sleep-study, then,” Eli said, pulling up the translation software on his laptop. “And I’ll do my translating, and we’ll get along fine.”

He shuffled the papers before him, trying to find where he’d left off before work. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Thrawn peeking at the orderly rows of Chinese characters and knew another question was coming.

“What do you translate?” Thrawn asked.

Eli bit back a smile. Right on cue.

“It’s boring stuff,” he said to Thrawn. “It’s not, you know, novels or song lyrics or anything.”

“Textbook?” Thrawn asked, laying one palm flat against his art history book.

“I _wish_ , but no,” said Eli. He shifted the papers to where Thrawn could see them — not that it would do him much good. “This is just a technical report,” he said. “Most of it’s just data-sifting. Graphs and logs and supply lists and boring shit like that.”

Thrawn raised one blue-black eyebrow and leaned closer for a better look. Eli watched him, waiting for the inevitable next question to come — but to his surprise, it didn’t. After a moment of intense looking, Thrawn shrugged and turned away, the expression on his face clearly bored. He returned to his art history books like he’d never asked what Eli was doing at all.

Well, that was okay, Eli supposed. He didn't need Thrawn to be interested in his work. He propped the pages up on a fold-out plastic clipstand so he could see the original Chinese text while he typed the English into his laptop. There was a period of awkward silence as he and Thrawn each shifted gears and got settled down, but within the next five minutes, the silence had become comfortable, even warm. 

Over an hour had passed — and Eli had slogged his way through fifteen pages of text — when Thrawn sat up straight, head tilted to the side and ears perked.

“What is it?” Eli asked him. 

Thrawn shook his head slightly, eyebrows furrowing as he listened. Then, in the distance, Eli heard it — a low rumble, so faint he would have missed it if Thrawn hadn’t tipped him off. He listened for a moment, then looked back at Thrawn with a smile.

“That’s just thunder,” Eli said. “What, they don’t have thunder where you come from?”

Then he reconsidered, frowning. Maybe Thrawn had been born on a spaceship or something; for all he knew, the guy didn’t even have a home planet. He could be a star-faring nomad of some sort.

Thrawn glanced at him briefly, a line between his eyebrows and a frown on his face, before he turned back to his art history book. Eli shrugged and decided to let it go. He dug his phone out of his pocket, noted that his Internet connection had gone out — typical, must be windy outside — and then checked his weather app.

Mild thunderstorms, high winds, 70% chance of rain. Eli couldn’t help but smile; he loved a good storm. He laid his phone face-down on the coffee table and turned back to his work. 

The wind became audible mere moments after that; the rain followed soon after. It plunked heavily against the windows, coming down sideways in a heavy torrent. Thrawn cast a cursory glance out the window before returning to his book, apparently not as interested now as he had been a moment before. Eli stared outside a little longer than Thrawn had; the sound of rain went straight to his heart, soothing away the stress of the day and making him relax perhaps more than he ought to while he was still working.

He turned back to his laptop reluctantly and typed out a few solitary words. His flow was gone, he recognized with chagrin. It would take him a while to get it back, but there was nothing to do now but keep going and—

Thunder boomed outside, ten times louder than it was before. Eli jumped, the laptop jostling in his hands, and laughed at himself by reflex a moment later. He turned to Thrawn, expecting the alien to share his smile — probably laughing at how easily the humans startled — and found Thrawn staring pensively out the window, his face pale, his lips pressed into a thin line.

“...Thrawn?” Eli said. 

Red eyes flickered his way, then back to the window. Thrawn’s face was unreadable, like a wooden mask. When another crash of thunder came, Eli could see Thrawn’s entire body tensing in response. His shoulders hitched up an inch or two and didn’t relax again; his hands, laid flat on the book before him, slowly closed into fists.

“Hey,” said Eli softly, leaning to the side. He stretched his arm out, his fingers just barely brushing Thrawn’s shoulder. “It’s just thunder.”

“Thunder,” Thrawn repeated flatly, his eyes still on the window.

“Yeah,” said Eli. “It’s a storm. It’s just … it’s the sound caused by lightning. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Thrawn’s eyes shifted alertly from one window pane to the next. He didn’t seem to feel Eli’s hand on his shoulder. Frowning, Eli drew back and set his laptop aside. He put his hands on the edge of the couch and had just started to stand when lightning flashed outside, turning the windows a brilliant white. The sound of thunder shook the house a moment later, so close that Eli almost felt his teeth rattle. 

He collapsed back into his seat by reflex, taken off-guard. In a flash, Thrawn was on his feet and at the windows, glaring into the darkness. His left hand strayed to his hip, as if reaching for a belt that was no longer there — as if reaching for a weapon, Eli guessed, or maybe a communicator. Thrawn seemed to remember halfway through the gesture that he had nothing left from the wreck, so he put his hands on the window sill instead and leaned forward, his nose almost touching the glass.

Okay, so maybe he was adapting, Eli thought tentatively. For a moment there, he’d thought Thrawn was scared, but now it looked more like a battle response. Eli reached for his laptop again, ready to dismiss it, when lightning flashed and thunder rolled again.

And in an instant, Thrawn was back across the room, diving onto the couch and burrowing into Eli’s side. Eli barely had time to squawk out a protest before Thrawn’s arms wrapped around his head and pulled him down against the cushions; he felt Thrawn’s cool, naked chest pressed against his back and realized belatedly that he was being sheltered from what Thrawn must have thought was an explosion.

He stayed there a moment, waiting until he felt the rapid up-and-down movement of Thrawn’s chest begin to slow. Then, gently, Eli extricated himself and grabbed Thrawn by the upper arms, forcing him to sit up as well. He could feel a subtle tremor of adrenaline moving through Thrawn’s biceps beneath his hands.

“It’s not an attack,” he said firmly, holding Thrawn still. “We’re safe. I promise.”

Thrawn’s eyes scanned his face, either not understanding or searching for a lie. He glanced past Eli to the windows and his expression darkened. Watching him, Eli remembered the shattered wreckage of the ship in the woods and wondered for the first time what sounds Thrawn might have heard as it went down. 

This time, when thunder rolled, it was softer and a little farther away. Thrawn’s lips twitched downward at the sound of it, but he didn’t respond the way he had last time. He was still pale, but after a moment he twisted in Eli’s grasp — slowly, not like he was trying to move away — and leaned heavily to the right, relaxing against Eli’s side. 

Eli froze, Thrawn’s head resting against his chest. He looked down, wondering if Thrawn could hear his heart pounding. This wasn't being sheltered from an imaginary bomb; this was being _cuddled._ He should protest, he thought — he had work to do, he couldn’t sit here all night with the alien shivering in his lap. But … well … the alien was shivering in his lap. What was he supposed to do, shove the poor guy away?

Carefully, Eli extricated his arms from beneath Thrawn and settled them over the alien’s side. His elbows rested lightly against Thrawn’s ribs and shoulder, but Thrawn didn’t move except to shift even closer. Gradually, he lay down with his head in Eli’s lap, as if he sensed that Eli wouldn’t push him away but wanted to get some work done at the same time. Eli adjusted his arms accordingly, trying to make sure he wasn’t poking Thrawn uncomfortably anywhere before he grabbed his laptop and stared blankly at the screen.

When thunder rolled the next time, Thrawn tensed a little but didn’t move. His eyes slid closed briefly; his trembling increased until it was almost like a spasm and then subsided again all at once. He only stilled when Eli ran a hand down his upper arm, smoothing the shakes away. 

With heavily-lidded eyes, Thrawn pressed the back of his head against Eli’s stomach and watched him work.


	4. Chapter 4

It was a bad idea, Eli knew. He knew it as he pulled into the liquor store on his way home from work. He knew it as he swerved past his usual selection of cold beer and headed straight for the liquor section instead. He knew it as he purchased two bottles — one of vodka, one of white rum — and he knew it as he wrapped the bottles up in a brown paper bag and carried them back out to his car.

He eyed them the whole way home, watching to make sure they didn’t roll off the passenger seat where he’d set them. _Don’t think about it,_ he told himself. Then, when that didn’t work, _You deserve it. You had a hard day._

Well, no harder than usual, really. It was more like he’d had an average, low-level-stressful week, filled with the typical irritating bureaucracy and unnecessary meetings and pointless over-explaining he’d grown used to when he was still in the military — but somehow, dealing with it all as a civilian contractor just made it ten times harder. 

I’m supposed to be past this, he wanted to scream every time another random officer tried to rope him into military drama. He wanted to tap his civilian badge — or better yet, throw it in their faces — and storm out in a huff sometimes. Or go on strike.

Or better yet, take a spontaneous vacation, since _he_ didn’t have to apply for leave two weeks in advance and they did. That would really rub it in their faces.

No, Eli thought, taking a deep breath and relaxing his hands on the steering wheel. While it would be nice to do all those things, he was ultimately too private-minded to unleash his frustrations like that in public. Best to buy some good, strong liquor, take it home to his new alien friend, and drink the stress away.

He pulled into his driveway and grimaced, looking at the darkened windows. Thrawn always kept the lights off when Eli wasn’t home, for some reason. He hoped it was because his strange, glowing eyes were more photosensitive than humans’. He didn’t want to consider the other option — that Thrawn was hiding from someone. 

He stepped out of the car, propping the bottles in the crook of his elbow. Outside the front door, he hesitated, key in the lock.

 _Game face,_ he told himself. He closed his eyes, pictured a nice, peaceful, clear stream in the forest — the sound of birds and cicadas chirping around him — the smell of fresh spring growth and a light, refreshing rain — and felt the stress smooth out of his features all at once.

Feeling better (and looking better), he stepped inside to greet Thrawn. 

And found him waiting right on the other side of the door.

“ _Jesus_ ,” Eli said, almost dropping the liquor. He took a sharp breath and forced himself not to jump back; after a moment, he pushed past Thrawn into the living room. “What are you doing? Don’t tell me you just stand there all day waiting for me to come home.”

Thrawn followed him into the kitchen, head cocked as Eli set the brown paper bag on the counter. “I heard you hesitate,” he said. 

Eli snorted gently, removing the bottle of vodka. “And what, thought you’d just go ahead and freak me out when I came inside?”

Thrawn didn’t answer for a moment. He bent at the waist to examine the vodka bottle without touching it, his hands clasped politely behind his back — like a child in an art museum who had been told not to touch anything and was taking that directive very seriously. When Eli took out the bottle of rum, he examined that one in turn.

“I’m sorry for … freaking you out,” Thrawn said, rolling the words around experimentally on his tongue. “I used my head to see you sad.”

Eli stared at Thrawn for a long minute, struggling to decipher that sentence. “You thought I was upset?” he asked.

Thrawn nodded.

“Why?” asked Eli.

Thrawn looked up from the liquor bottles, eyebrows raised. “Was I wrong?” Then, before Eli could figure out an answer, “How do you say, ‘I used my head to see you sad’?”

“Uh…” Eli thought it over again, more quickly this time. “The best way to say it would probably just be, ‘I thought you might be sad.’ It’s more natural to say ‘upset’ than ‘sad,’ because ‘upset’ is a little more vague, and humans don’t like to be so direct when talking about feelings. At least, _I_ don’t. But when you ‘use your head to see’ things, we have a word for that — it’s called _imagining_ things. You imagined that I was sad. Or you _imagined_ that there was a pink unicorn flouncing around in the living room. Get it?”

A frown presented itself around Thrawn’s eyes. “I get it,” he said, though it didn’t seem like he did.

Eli suspected he shouldn’t have introduced the concept of pink unicorns just yet. He turned to his fridge and grabbed a half-full bottle of orange juice from the bottom shelf.

“You wanna drink with me?” he asked, lifting the orange juice high.

Thrawn studied the bottle for a moment, eyes narrowed, and gave an almost imperceptible nod. Eli grabbed two glasses from the cupboard — his old Muppets glasses that he’d gotten from McDonald’s as a kid, he noted with chagrin — and poured perhaps too much vodka and too little orange juice into each one.

He handed Thrawn one of the glasses and for a moment they just looked at each other, Thrawn expressionless and Eli cracking a tiny smile. He tipped his glass forward for a toast and was surprised when Thrawn met the gesture in kind, clinking his glass against Eli’s.

“Bottoms up,” Eli said, and took a big gulp from the glass.

Thrawn, across from him, drained the entire glass in one go.

“Jesus, dude!” Eli said, the sour-bitter taste of vodka making his mouth twist. “What the hell—”

“Ecch,” Thrawn said, shaking his head. He squeezed his eyes closed, lips forming an intense frown. “Eli…” he said, his voice coming out a little raw. “You tricked me.”

“I didn’t trick you!” Eli protested. “You chugged that thing all on your own!”

“Ecch,” said Thrawn again. He opened one eye to scowl at his empty glass. “You said ‘bottoms up.’”

“I didn’t mean—” Eli stopped, reconsidered. How _else_ was Thrawn supposed to interpret those words? “Well, yeah, I guess I kind of did trick you, then,” he admitted begrudgingly. “Are you okay?”

With a sour look on his face, Thrawn set his empty glass down on the counter. Then, to Eli’s disbelief, he reached for the vodka bottle and poured himself another measure. 

“I do not like the orange milk,” he said decisively, taking a disconcertingly large drink of straight vodka. This time, his face stayed smooth and unbothered.

“Oh my God,” Eli muttered. Louder: “It’s orange _juice_ , not orange milk. Milk comes from animals. Juice comes from fruits and vegetables.”

Thrawn nodded, then lifted his glass to Eli. “Juice or milk?” he asked, tilting the glass slightly so that the vodka inside made gentle waves. 

“Neither,” said Eli, suppressing a smile. “That’s alcohol. It gets you drunk if you have too much, so don’t go crazy, okay?”

Thrawn glanced down at it with a frown. “How much is too much?” he asked. “And what is ‘drunk’?”

“Uh…” said Eli, privately calculating how much Thrawn had already had. “Well, the threshold is different for everyone, even among humans. Usually, the bigger you are, the more you can handle. Does it taste familiar to you? I mean, do they have alcohol where you’re from?”

Thrawn stared at him, his face unreadable, and took another sip.

“As for ‘drunk,’” Eli said, setting his own glass down, “it’s like a dulling of your brain. It makes you feel happier than usual — or sadder than usual, again, depending on the person — and it, ah, sort of releases your inhibitions, which…” He studied Thrawn’s face for any sign of comprehension. “Which is definitely not a word you know yet,” he concluded. 

Thrawn raised an eyebrow.

“Inhibition,” Eli said, feeling very much like he was stepping foot in a rabbit hole of dictionary definitions. “It’s this sort of mental block that people have that prevents them from doing what they really want to do. It’s like this barrier in your mind — usually caused by society or your upbringing — that stops you from being totally relaxed and natural all the time. When you get drunk, your block goes away, and suddenly you can be natural. And relaxed.”

“I see,” said Thrawn. He grabbed Eli’s glass off the counter and handed it to him politely. “Then you should drink more. You have too many inhibitions.”

Eli blushed a little at that, but accepted the glass without argument. Thrawn didn’t know exactly what he was implying with that statement, Eli decided. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said it.

Together, they took another long drink from their individual glasses. Without the orange juice mixed in, Thrawn seemed to drink the vodka like it was water. It was only after a few more drinks that Eli realized the alien was pacing himself, only drinking when he saw Eli doing the same. 

Well, Eli could handle that.

He kind of felt like he could handle anything, now that he’d had an entire Muppets-themed glass of mostly-vodka. 

* * *

Eli’s eyes were glazed and hooded, and he was just starting to drift off into a drunken slumber when he felt a cool hand against his forehead and startled awake.

“Something to show you,” said Thrawn, sounding just as drunk as Eli felt. The empty bottle of vodka was on the coffee table before them, with the half-empty bottle of rum not far away. With a groan, Eli rubbed his eyes and struggled out of the crevice in the couch that he’d slowly slouched deeper and deeper into throughout the night.

“Show me what?” Eli asked. He blinked blearily at the TV, which was turned to the local public broadcast station. An eccentric survivalist from the more rural end of the county was cataloging his weapons in a droning voice, his words eaten up every now and then by static.

“It’s a surprise,” Thrawn said.

He held out his hand to Eli, silently offering to help him up. After a moment, Eli took the offer; he liked the feeling of Thrawn’s skin against his, especially when he was so flushed from the alcohol and Thrawn was so comfortingly cool. He stumbled a little as Thrawn pulled him to his feet, and Thrawn stumbled, too, backing into the coffee table and gripping Eli tightly so neither of them would go down. He pressed Eli to his bare chest for a moment and Eli went still, eyes wide, suddenly unable to breathe.

He was just starting to relax again when Thrawn found his balance and moved away.

“Come,” Thrawn said, leading Eli to the bedroom. Heart in his throat, Eli followed. Other than a few quick trips to the hall bathroom, he hadn’t been to this side of the house at all today — not since he came home and, perhaps unwisely, started a drinking contest with an alien who may or may not be an alcoholic, based on how quickly he was putting back plain vodka. There could be anything waiting for him in his bedroom.

A new spaceship, maybe. Or wreckage from his old one.

Or an entirely new goddamn alien.

Thrawn pushed Eli’s bedroom door open and ushered him inside, his face giving nothing away. They faced each other at the foot of the bed, Thrawn looking down into Eli’s eyes, neither of them saying anything. Then, gently, Thrawn pushed Eli toward the bed.

“Sit,” he said.

Eli never obeyed an order so fast in his life. He jumped onto the bed fully-clothed, bouncing slightly on the mattress, and shimmied drunkenly up to the pillows. There, he lounged on his side and waited for Thrawn to join him.

Instead, Thrawn turned to his closet and pulled out an orange fleece quarter-zip, the kind worn by hunters in the fall. Eli narrowed his eyes at it, then studied Thrawn’s face, looking for answers. There was a slight smile on Thrawn’s lips; wordlessly, he put the hunting fleece back and pulled out another shirt — this one long-sleeved, athletic-fit, and…

“Camo,” said Eli, feeling slightly ill.

Thrawn nodded, looking inordinately pleased with himself.

“Thrawn…” said Eli. He struggled into a sitting position, leaning heavily on his elbows. “Where’d you get those? You didn’t go out, did you?”

Thrawn put the camouflage shirt back and pulled out a camouflage hoodie. “Amazing,” he said.

“Yeah, bud, sure,” said Eli. “Where’d you get them?”

“Amazing,” Thrawn repeated. He put the camouflage hoodie back and pulled out a mesh undershirt — the kind Eli had only ever seen worn by strippers and punks. His face spasmed as Thrawn examined it for a moment and then pulled it over his head. “Some items are not ideal,” Thrawn said, rubbing the mesh between two fingers. “As body armor, this is not as efficient as it looks.”

“It doesn’t look very efficient,” Eli said. Thrawn shot him a frown. “Now, I wasn’t so sure about the camo stuff,” Eli continued, “but I know for a fact you couldn’t have gotten that undershirt at the local Walmart. You need to be honest with me, dude. Where did you go?”

Thrawn’s frown only deepened. He looked back at the closet, where Eli could see several other items — new jeans, a sweater, athletic shorts — either hanging up or folded on top of the organizer where Eli was supposed to store his shoes. 

“I got it from Amazing,” Thrawn said. He traced an uncertain symbol in the air — a little smiley face, Eli realized.

“You mean Amazon?” he asked, relief flooding through him. “You got these online?”

Thrawn’s face brightened a little. “Yes. Amazon. Online.”

“Ohhh.” Eli slumped back on the bed, hiding his face with his hands. “Oh, thank God. I thought you took my bike into town or something and everyone was gonna think I had a weird new boyfriend who loves to LARP as a White Walker.”

He took a moment to enjoy the sensation of relief. Only when he felt the mattress dipping to the left did he open his eyes; he found Thrawn sitting on the edge, watching Eli with a note of concern.

“LARP?” Thrawn asked.

Eli chuckled. “You don’t wanna know.” He scooted a little to the side and Thrawn moved closer in response, pulling his legs up onto the bed. “Why’d you have to buy so much camo?” Eli asked, letting his hand fall so that his fingertips brushed Thrawn’s arm. He grimaced at the feel of the mesh undershirt.

“Camo is short for camouflage, yes?” said Thrawn, pronouncing both words carefully. 

“Yeah.”

“It is very useful clothing,” Thrawn told him. “Tactically, everyone should be wearing it out here.”

Eli snorted. It was amazing to him which words Thrawn picked up — tactically, efficient, ideal — and which, like Amazon and camo, escaped his grasp. 

“You’re gonna look like the weirdest country boy in existence, you know,” he said. “At least you’ll blend in with the locals, though. Blue skin notwithstanding.” He smiled slightly, then jerked his head up as an unpleasant thought occurred to him. "Wait, how did you buy _anything_ from Amazon?" he asked. "Did you use my debit card?"

Thrawn gave a low hum and settled down against the mattress, resting his head on the pillow next to Eli. He angled his chin toward Eli, his eyes hooded, his face soft.

“You don’t like this shirt,” he said.

Eli glanced down at the fine layer of mesh covering Thrawn’s chest. He could see Thrawn’s nipples through the material, both of them erect from the sensation of tight, coarse mesh rubbing up against them. His mouth went dry. 

“Uh,” he said. “Well, I’m not complaining. How much did it cost, though?”

Thrawn only smiled. Maybe it was the alcohol speaking — okay, it was definitely the alcohol speaking — but Eli found that he didn't really care. He watched as if from a distant plane as his hand came up between them, resting palm-down on Thrawn’s chest. His thumb found Thrawn’s nipple and stroked it, a touch so quick and soft that Eli couldn’t be sure he’d really done it. He watched Thrawn’s eyelids flicker, the red glow seeming to intensify.

Thrawn’s hand came up to cover Eli’s — not moving it away, just squeezing it tightly.

“I hoped you would,” he said. He stared deeply into Eli’s eyes for a moment — and was he _aware_ of how badly that stole Eli’s breath away? Did he do it on purpose? — and then, in one measured, calculated movement, he lifted Eli’s hand to his lips and stuck Eli’s first three fingers into his mouth. He felt Thrawn’s tongue against his skin, shocked by how warm it was compared to the rest of his body.

“What…” Eli’s voice came out so hoarse that he had to stop and clear his throat. “What you doing there, Thrawn?”

 _Alien drinking game,_ he chanted to himself, not sure whether he was hoping this was true or praying that it wasn’t. Thrawn sucked his fingers a little longer, then pulled away and said,

“You don’t want to help me?”

Eli’s heart thudded in his chest. “Help you?” he whispered.

“Prepare me,” Thrawn said. When Eli didn’t answer right away — _couldn’t_ answer right away, because his tongue suddenly felt like a lead weight in his mouth — Thrawn raised his eyebrows and said, “Unless you want me to be the flagship.”

Flagship? Oh, God save him from gay alien slang. Eli shifted in bed, trying to ignore the rising signs of interest between his legs. He glanced down and saw a corresponding tent in Thrawn’s trousers — and couldn’t help but remember the sheer size of the erection he’d seen the other day when he taught Thrawn how the shower worked.

“Yeah,” he said, “I don’t think I’m ready for you to be the flagship.”

Nodding slightly, Thrawn took hold of Eli’s hand again, sucking on his fingers only for a few seconds before he pulled away again. This time, he guided Eli’s hand down past his chest and abs, to the waistband of his sweatpants. 

“You know how?” he asked innocently.

Eli could feel heat emanating from Thrawn through his pants. He sucked in a sharp breath. “Yeah,” he said shakily. “I know how.”

“Then…”

Thrawn pressed Eli’s hand against his cock, lightly but insistently. Before Eli could get his bearings, he felt Thrawn’s hands wrap around his waist and lift him, pulling him closer, until they were chest to chest.

Or more accurately, cock to cock, with Eli’s hand trapped between them. He looked down into Thrawn’s eyes, his gaze blurred by sleep, his face still soft — and more open than Eli had ever seen it.

“No inhibitions,” Thrawn reminded him, rocking his hips.

Eli couldn’t help but smile. Drunk as he was, he didn’t think he’d ever stop smiling.

“No inhibitions,” he agreed.

* * *

If it wasn’t for the half-bottle of vodka resting in his bladder, Eli would’ve never woken up. He was too drunk — and too sated by the best sex of his life — to sleep for less than eighteen hours, minimum. When he opened his eyes, his limbs felt completely boneless and immovable, and his mouth felt like it was made of sandpaper, and his eyelids were almost too heavy to move.

Groggily, he raised his head and cracked open his eyes. He saw a dim glow — red and blue and white — and squinted into it, vaguely becoming aware of a soft, low voice in the background.

“ _Nidatra on-tsokosoka timyn'na tifako olembolana oha timyn'na àlyn'na mpandraharahi sivyly iray_ ,” the voice said. Eli winced, trying to adjust to the dim light, and then realized he was looking at Thrawn, silhouetted against the light from Eli’s once-broken PS3. 

“ _Nonema yhi fidarana imyn'na ontantan-taratisam-panjakana morebo mamby na famitsaany sy ne hitsaki maarimala oha_ ,” Thrawn said, holding something to his lips. “ _Mahya imyn'ni fetyna mori yzi. Mona oha fy na manam-pahiazano mamby na asyni dae myto ha mpindake tyne_.”

Eli blinked a few times, willing his vision to focus. When he narrowed his eyes, he could see that the thing in Thrawn’s hand was some sort of small, electronic device, something he didn’t recognize — and whenever Thrawn spoke into it, the light on the PS3 flickered and pulsed.

I fixed your telephone, Thrawn had said the day before. Eli remembered those words now with a chill. 

“ _Tsikirotra fi morana mimpaasi andrey tyni maifani imyn'na koanta morebi yza ury meiretriratra oha fy ne tinimaifoko ha yn'no co’ssle maifana ombany yna im-paasani dae myto ho_ …” Thrawn said, and then abruptly, he switched to English. “Lower case gee-em, number 3, capital ess-tee-ee-pee-ess, lower-case gee-em, three, lower-case ess, capital ess-tee-number three-arr.”

Eli sat bolt upright in bed, the covers rustling around him. That was his password! That was the password he used for his work laptop! He’d constructed it so carefully, based on the government parameters, and he’d used a Lynyrd Skynyrd lyric he liked as the basis to make sure he wouldn’t forget the complex string of symbols that went into it. Suddenly, he remembered the night before — the thunderstorm — Thrawn seeking comfort in him, but positioning his head against Eli's lap so he could see the screen of Eli's computer as he typed...

Across the room, Thrawn turned and glanced at Eli, a flicker of unreadable emotion passing his face.

“ _Na_ ,” he said into the small, strange-looking communicator in his hand, “HYST3R!@Wyrnear.”

Heart thudding, Eli recognized the other password he frequently used, this one based off a Def Leppard song. He stared at Thrawn uncomprehendingly … and Thrawn stared back, no trace of remorse in his face. 

Still making eye contact with Eli, he pressed a button on his communicator and the PS3 went dark.


	5. Chapter 5




	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Eli gets over things (so quickly it strains credulity) and Thrawn preps him for another bombshell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's an alternate universe where I let this remain a oneshot and in that universe I am a healthier happier person

“Yes,” said Thrawn calmly, “I tricked you. Will you stop trying to hit me now?”

Eli strained at the ropes around his wrists, trying futilely to break through them. He wasn’t familiar with the knots Thrawn had used, and couldn’t figure out how to work them loose. As he examined them, he could feel Thrawn studying his face from the other side of the room.

“I’m perfectly willing to untie you if you stop attacking,” Thrawn said.

“ _Ugh_ ,” Eli said, trying to tug his wrists apart from each other. The ropes wouldn’t give. “ _Fine_. Take the goddamn ropes off.”

Thrawn studied Eli’s face for a moment before acquiescing. He stepped forward without any sign of concern for his own safety -- and why _should_ he be concerned? Eli thought bitterly. His one attempted attack had been just that: _attempted_. Thrawn had flipped him back onto the mattress and pinned him on his stomach with ease.

Thrawn undid the knots around Eli’s wrists with quick, deft movements, neatly looping the rope for easy storage as it came loose. He eyed Eli speculatively as he stepped away again.

“It was not _all_ a trick, Eli,” he said softly.

Eli froze in the middle of massaging his wrists, which weren’t actually all that sore. He gave Thrawn a sharp look, thinking unwillingly of everything that passed between them in the past few days.

“Oh yeah?” he said warily. “Like that?”

He thought of the shower, the cuddling, the way Thrawn had moved to protect him by reflex during the thunderstorm. The kissing. The sex.

“I really am not very fluent in English,” Thrawn told him.

Eli’s expression soured. 

“And I truly did lose control of my ship and crash,” Thrawn continued.

“Oh, sure,” said Eli. “And you just so happened to crash in the backyard of a guy with a top secret clearance who works for the U.S. government. That makes sense.”

Thrawn gave him a wounded look. “I did not say I was in this _area_ by accident,” he said. “Only that I did not crash on purpose.”

Eli gave a soft snort at that, shaking his head. He eyed the old PlayStation that Thrawn had fixed — fixed so well that, apparently, it was now capable of communicating with alien races stationed God-knows-where. 

He would have to report this, he thought, closing his eyes. But then again, who the hell was he supposed to report it to? They hadn’t exactly covered alien encounters in his training; if he went to his supervisor with something like this, he’d probably be put in the psych ward and have his clearance suspended. Nobody would listen to him … unless he brought evidence. Pictures of Thrawn, maybe.

Except that Thrawn really didn’t look all that different from a human. They’d think he was pulling a prank on him, or else that he’d been tricked by some LARPer in blue body paint and red eye contacts. The only hope he had that he might be believed was if the government was already fully aware of aliens like Thrawn — and that seemed plausible, but too dim a hope for Eli to pin his career and safety on.

Thrawn raised his eyebrows.

“Let’s say I turn you in,” Eli said.

“You won’t,” said Thrawn simply.

“But let’s say I did,” Eli persisted.

“Turn me into whom?” asked Thrawn, cocking his head. “The police?”

“The government,” Eli snapped. “Don’t play dumb.”

“What would the government want with me?” asked Thrawn. 

Eli swallowed back an upswell of rage. He placed his hands flat on the bedspread to avoid curling them into fists.

“Well, for one thing, you’ve just shared my secure password to God only knows who,” he said levelly. “To me, that suggests you’re trying to break into my server. Which is a criminal offense.”

Thrawn said nothing to that. He only tilted his head to the other side and surveyed Eli with something that looked dangerously close to quiet amusement.

“Besides which, you’re an alien,” Eli said. “The government always wants aliens.”

“Do they?” asked Thrawn. “Have you dealt with aliens before?”

“No, but everyone knows—”

“What does the government do with aliens?” Thrawn asked, his expression not changing. 

“Experiment on them,” said Eli with a shrug. He tried desperately to pretend he wasn’t getting this information from E.T. “Torture them. Kill them.”

Thrawn was quiet, his eyes glittering in the dark. “You really think so?” he said eventually.

Eli’s chest felt tight. He thought it over more seriously. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s possible.”

Thrawn fiddled with the loop of rope, running his thumb over it as he absently scanned the room. Without looking behind him, he reached back and turned off the PS3. “And you would turn me in knowing this?” he asked, his voice even and toneless.

Eli’s gut twisted. He tried to summon up the rage he’d felt when he realized Thrawn tricked him, but all he felt was a cold, numb sensation that spread from his chest to his limbs. “Look,” he said, his voice heavy, “you’re not my friend. Don’t pretend to be now. What you are is an alien intruder who wormed his way into my life, stole my password, and used me to get secret government files. You can’t expect me to go easy on you now just because we—”

He gestured wordlessly to the bed.

“Go easy on me,” Thrawn repeated with a trace of a smile.

Remembering how Thrawn had pinned him to the bed, Eli flushed. 

“In any case,” said Thrawn, “you misunderstand circumstances gravely, Eli. But if you wish for me to leave, I will go.”

Eli stood up at that, exasperation and anger warring in him. “Go where?” he asked. “Back to your wrecked ship in the woods? What are you going to do, camp until your friends come and rescue you?”

“My friends, as you call them, will do no rescuing,” said Thrawn evenly. “I will make do.”

This was manipulation, Eli told himself. Thrawn was bluffing; he was playing on Eli’s feelings for him, on his sympathies — trying to convince Eli that if he was kicked out, he’d have no other recourse but to camp in the woods. 

It wouldn’t work, Eli told himself. He’d kick Thrawn out, and then he’d call the authorities — er, that is, his boss — and tell him everything that had happened. And his boss _would_ believe him, he tried to convince himself.

And … then what?

And then his boss would find out Eli had secretly taken an alien into his home and slept with him? That Eli had willingly, with only slight coercion, opened his work laptop and typed his password in while the alien was watching? That Eli had given the alien up only after a solid week of cuddling with him on the couch?

“Oh, goddammit,” Eli said, kicking his bedframe in frustration. “Fuck it, Thrawn. I don’t even _like_ the government, anyway. This job _sucks_.”

Thrawn raised his eyebrows, looking tentatively pleased. “I can…?”

“You can just stay here,” said Eli with a scowl. “Goddammit.”

Thrawn was smiling widely.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Eli said.

The smile didn’t disappear. Eli scrubbed his hands down his face and heaved a sigh.

“So what the hell do you mean, your friends will do no rescuing?” he asked.

He had the grave pleasure of watching the smile slide right off Thrawn’s face. He gestured to Eli’s bed, a grim expression settling on his lips.

“Sit down,” he said. “I have a lot to tell you.”


End file.
